\-L~2. 


WALT   WHITMAN 


WHITMAN 


A   STUDY 


BY 


JOHN   BURROUGHS 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND   COMPANY 
J9r*#$,  Cambrib0e 
1902 


Copyright,  1896, 
BT  JOHN  BURROUGHS. 


All  rights  reserved. 


PS  32-38 


CONTENTS 

PAOB 

PRELIMINARY 1 

BIOGRAPHICAL  AND  PERSONAL 23 

His  RULING  IDEAS  AND  AIMS 73 

His  SELF-RELIANCE 85 

His  RELATION  TO  ART  AND  LITERATURE  .       .       .       .101 
His  RELATION  TO  LIFE  AND  MORALS     ....        169 

.    205 
229' 

His  RELATION  TO  SCIENCE  .-• '< 

His  RELATION  TO  RELIGION  • 

A  FINAL  WORD 263 


His  RELATION  TO  CULTURE  <• 

His  RELATION  TO  HIS  COUNTRY  AND  HIS  TIMES 


:u 


"AH  original  art  is  self-regulated,  and  no  original  art  can  be 
regulated  from  without ;  it  carries  its  own  counterpoise,  and  does 
not  receive  it  from  elsewhere."  —  TAINE. 

"If  you  want  to  tell  good  Gothic,  see  if  it  has  the  sort  of  rough 
ness  and  largeness  and  nonchalance,  mixed  in  places  with  the  ex 
quisite  tenderness  which  seems  always  to  be  the  sign  manual  of  the 
broad  vision  and  massy  power  of  men  who  can  see  past  the  work 
they  are  doing,  and  betray  here  and  there  something  like  disdain 
for  it."—  RUSKIN. 

"  Formerly,  during  the  period  termed  classic,  when  literature 
was  governed  by  recognized  rules,  he  was  considered  the  best  poet 
who  had  composed  the  most  perfect  work,  the  most  beautiful  poem, 
the  most  intelligible,  the  most  agreeable  to  read,  the  most  complete 
in  every  respect,  —  the  ^Eneid,  the  Gerusalemme,  a  Jine  tragedy. 
To-day  something  else  is  wanted.  For  us  the  greatest  poet  is  he 
who  in  his  works  most  stimulates  the  reader's  imagination  and  re 
flection,  who  excites  him  the  most  himself  to  poetize.  The  greatest 
poet  is  not  he  who  has  done  the  best,  it  is  he  who  suggests  the  most ; 
he,  not  all  of  whose  meaning  is  at  Jirst  obvious,  and  who  leaves 
you  much  to  desire,  to  explain,  to  study,  much  to  complete  in  your 
turn."  —  SAINTE-BEUVE. 


WHITMAN 


PEELIMINAKY 


writing  of  this  preliminary  chapter,  and  the 
final  survey  and  revision  of  my  Whitman  essay, 
I  am  making  at  a  rustic  house  I  have  built  at  a  wild 
place  a  mile  or  more  from  my  home  upon  the  river. 
I  call  this  place  Whitman  Land,  because  in  many 
ways  it  is  typical  of  my  poet,  —  an  amphitheatre 
of  precipitous  rock,  slightly  veiled  with  a  delicate 
growth  of  verdure,  enclosing  a  few  acres  of  prairie- 
like  land,  once  the  site  of  an  ancient  lake,  now  a 
garden  of  unknown  depth  and  fertility.  Elemental 
ruggedness,  savageness,  and  grandeur,  combined  with 
wonderful  tenderness,  modernness,  and  geniality. 
There  rise  the  gray  scarred  cliffs,  crowned  here  and 
there  with  a  dead  hemlock  or  pine,  where,  morning 
after  morning,  I  have  seen  the  bald-eagle  perch,  and 
here  at  their  feet  this  level  area  of  tender  humus, 
with  three  perennial  springs  of  delicious  cold  water 
flowing  in  its  margin ;  a  huge  granite  bowl  filled  with 
the  elements  and  potencies  of  life.  The  scene  has 
a  strange  fascination  for  me,  and  holds  me  here  day 


2  *;V         ,  \  WHITMAN 


eV  Jdeiji.;  '  O&qm  jihjD\hi§hest  point  of  rocks  I  can 
overlook  a  long  stretch  of  the  river  and  of  the  farm 
ing  country  beyond;  I  can  hear  owls  hoot,  hawks 
scream,  and  roosters  crow.  Birds  of  the  garden 
and  orchard  meet  birds  of  the  forest  upon  the  shaggy 
cedar  posts  that  uphold  my  porch.  At  dusk  the 
call  of  the  whippoorwill  mingles  with  the  chorus 
of  the  pickerel  frogs,  and  in  the  morning  I  hear 
through  the  robins'  cheerful  burst  the  sombre  plaint 
of  the  mourning-  dove.  When  I  tire  of  my  manu 
script,  I  walk  in  the  woods,  or  climb  the  rocks,  or 
help  the  men  clear  up  the  ground,  piling  and  burn 
ing  the  stumps  and  rubbish.  This  scene  and  sit 
uation,  so  primitive  and  secluded,  yet  so  touched 
with  and  adapted  to  civilization,  responding  to  the 
moods  of  both  sides  of  the  life  and  imagination  of  a 
modern  man,  seems,  I  repeat,  typical  in  many  ways 
of  my  poet,  and  is  a  veritable  Whitman  land. 
Whitman  does  not  to  me  suggest  the  wild  and  un 
kempt  as  he  seems  to  do  to  many;  he  suggests  the 
cosmic  and  the  elemental,  and  this  is  one  of  the 
dominant  thoughts  that  run  through  my  disserta 
tion.  I  Scenes  of  power  and  savagery  in  nature  were 
more  welcome  to  him,  probably  more  stimulating  to 
him,  than  the  scenes  of  the  pretty  and  placid,  and 
he  cherished  the  hope  that  he  had  put  into  his 
"Leaves"  some  of  the  tonic  and  fortifying  quality 
of  Nature  in  her  more  grand  and  primitive  aspects.  \ 

His  wildness  is  only  the  wildness  of  the  great 
primary  forces  from  which  we  draw  our  health  and 
strength.  Underneath  all  his  unloosedness,  or  free 


PRELIMINARY  3 

launching  forth  of  himself,  is  the  sanity  and  repose 
of  nature. 

ii 

I  first  became  acquainted  with  Whitman's  poetry 
through  the  columns  of  the  old  "Saturday  Press" 
when  I  was  twenty  or  twenty-one  years  old  (1858 
or  1859).  The  first  things  I  remember  to  have  read 
were  "There  was  a  child  went  forth,"  "This  Com 
post,"  "As  I  ebb'd  with  the  Ocean  of  Life,"  "Old 
Ireland,"  and  maybe  a  few  others.  I  was  attracted 
by  the  new  poet's  work  from  the  first.  It  seemed 
to  let  me  into  a  larger,  freer  air  than  I  found  in  the 
current  poetry.  Meeting  Bayard  Taylor  about  this 
time,  I  spoke  to  him  about  Whitman.  "Yes,"  he 
said,  "there  is  something  in  him,  but  he  is* a  man 
of  colossal  egotism." 

A  few  years  later  a  friend  sent  me  a  copy  of  the 
Thayer  &  Eldridge  edition  of  "Leaves  of  Grass  " 
of  1860.  It  proved  a  fascinating  but  puzzling  book 
to  me.  I  grazed  upon  it  like  a  colt  upon  a  moun 
tain,  taking  what  tasted  good  to  me,  and  avoiding 
what  displeased  me,  but  having  little  or  no  con 
ception  of  the  purport  of  the  work  as  a  whole.  I 
found  passages  and  whole  poems  here  and  there 
that  I  never  tired  of  reading,  and  that  gave  a  strange 
fillip  to  my  moral  and  intellectual  nature,  but  nearly 
as  many  passages  and  poems  puzzled  or  repelled  me. 
My  absorption  of  Emerson  had  prepared  me  in  a 
measure  for  Whitman's  philosophy  of  life,  but  not 
for  the  ideals  of  character  and  conduct  which  he 
held  up  to  me,  nor  for  the  standards  in  art  to  which 


4  WHITMAN        ^ 

the  poet  perpetually  appealed.  Whitman  was  Emer 
son  translated  from  the  abstract  into  the  concrete. 
There  was  no  privacy  with  Whitman;  he  never 
sat  me  down  in  a  corner  with  a  cozy,  comfortable 
shut-in  feeling,  but  he  set  me  upon  a  hill  or  started 
me  upon  an  endless  journey.  Wordsworth  had 
been  my  poet  of  nature,  of  the  sequestered  and  the 
idyllic;  but(I  saw  that  here  was  a  poet  of  a  larger, 
more  fundamental  nature,  indeed  of  the  Cosmos 
itself.  )  Not  a  poet  of  dells  and  fells,  but  of  the 
earth  and  the  orbs.  This  much  soon  appeared  to 
me,  but  I  was  troubled  by  the  poet's  apparent  "co- 
1  lossal  egotism,"  by  his  attitude  towards  evil,  declar 
ing  himself  "  to  be  the  poet  of  wickedness  also ; " 
by  his  seeming  attraction  toward  the  turbulent  and 
the  disorderly;  and,  at  times,  by  what  the  critics 
had  called  his  cataloguing  style  of  treatment. 

When  I  came  to  meet  the  poet  himself,  which 
was  in  the  fall  of  1863,  I  felt  less  concern  about 
these  features  of  his  work;  he  was  so  sound  and 
sweet  and  gentle  and  attractive  as  a  man,  and 
withal  so  wise  and  tolerant,  that  I  soon  came  to 
feel  the  same  confidence  in  the  book  that  I  at  once 
placed  in  its  author,  even  in  the  parts  which  I  did 
not  understand.  I  saw  that  the  work  and  the  man 
were  one,  and  that  the  former  must  be  good  as  the 
latter  was  good.  There  was  something  in  the  man 
ner  in  which  both  the  book  and  its  author  carried 
themselves  under  the  sun,  and  in  the  way  they  con 
fronted  America  and  the  present  time,  that  convinced 
beyond  the  power  of  logic  or  criticism. 


PRELIMINARY  5 

The  more  I  saw  of  Whitman,  and  the  more  I 
studied  his  "Leaves,"  the  more  significance  I  found 
in  both,  and  the  clearer  it  became  to*  me  that^a 
new  type  of  a  man  and  a  new  departure  in  poetic  lit 
erature  were  here  foreshadowed.  There  was  some 
thing  forbidding,  but  there  was  something  vital 
and  grand  back  of  it.  I  found  to  be  true  what  the 
poet  said  of  himself,  — 

"  Bearded,  sunburnt,  gray-neck'd,  forbidding,  I  have  arrived, 
To  be  wrestled  with  as  I  pass  for  the  solid  prizes  of  the'universe, 
For  such  I  afford  whoever  can  persevere  to  win  them,"  — 

I  have  persevered  in  my  study  of  the  poet,  though 
balked  many  times,  and  the  effect  upon  my  own 
mental  and  spiritual  nature  has  been  great;  no  such 
"solid  prizes  "  in  the  way  of  a  broader  outlook  upon 
life  and  nature,  and,  I  may  say,  upon  art,  has  any 
poet  of  my  time  afforded  me.  There  are  passages 
or  whole  poems  in  the  "Leaves"  which  I  do  not 
yet  understand  ("  Sleep-Chasings  "  is  one  of  them), 
though  the  language  is  as  clear  as  daylight;  they 
are  simply  too  subtle  or  elusive  for  me;  but  my 
confidence  in  the  logical  soundness  of  the  book  is 
so  complete  that  I  do  not  trouble  myself  at  all  about 
these  things. 

in 

I  would  fain  make  these  introductory  remarks 
to  my  essay  a  sort  of  window  through  which  the 
reader  may  get  a  fairly  good  view  of  what  lies  be 
yond.  If  he  does  not  here  get  any  glimpse  or  sug 
gestion  of  what  pleases  him,  or  of  what  he  is  look- 


*  WHITMAN 

ing  for,  it  will  hardly  be  worth  while  for  him  to 
trouble  himself*  further. 

A  great  many  readers,  perhaps  three  fourths  of 
the  readers  of  current  poetry,  and  not  a  few  of  the 
writers  thereof,  cannot  stand  Whitman  at  all,  or  see 
any  reason  for  his  being.  To  such  my  essay,  if  it 
ever  comes  to  their  notice,  will  be  a  curiosity,  may 
be  an  offense.  But  I  trust  it  will  meet  with  a 
different  reception  at  the  hands  of  the  smaller  but 
rapidly  growing  circle  of  those  who  are  beginning 
to  turn  to  Whitman  as  the  most  imposing  and  sig 
nificant  figure  iii  our  literary  annals. 

The  rapidly  growing  Whitman  literature  attests 
the  increasing  interest  to  which  I  refer.  Indeed, 
it  seems  likely  that  by  the  end  of  the  century  the 
literature  which  will  have  grown  up  around  the 
name  of  this  man  will  surpass  in  bulk  and  value 
that  which  has  grown  up  around  the  name  of  any 
other  man  of  letters  born  within  the  century. 

When  Mr.  Stedman  wrote  his  essay  upon  the 
poet  early  in  the  eighties,  he  referred  to  the  mass  of 
this  literature.  It  has  probably  more  than  doubled 
in  volume  in  the  intervening  years:  since  Whit 
man's  death  in  the  spring  of  '92,  it  has  been  added 
to  by  William  Clark's  book  upon  the  poet,  Profes 
sor  Trigg's  study  of  Browning  and  Whitman,  and 
the  work  of  that  accomplished  critic  and  scholar, 
so  lately  gone  to  his  rest,  John  Addington  Symonds. 
This  last  is  undoubtedly  the  most  notable  contribu 
tion  that  has  yet  been  made,  or  is  likely  very  soon 
to  be  made,  to  the  Whitman  literature.  Mr. 


PRELIMINARY  7 

Symonds  declares  that  "Leaves  of  Grass,"  which  he 
first  read  at  the  age  of  twenty-five,  influenced  him 
more  than  any  other  book  has  done,  except  the 
Bible,  —  more  than  Plato,  more  than  Goethe. 

When  we  remember  that  the  man  who  made  this 
statement  was  eminently  a  man  of  books,  deeply 
read  in  all  literatures,  his  testimony  may  well  offset 
that  of  a  score  of  our  home  critics  who  find  nothing 
worthy  or  helpful  in  Whitman's  work.  One  posi 
tive  witness  in  such  a  matter  outweighs  any  number 
of  negative  ones. 

IV 

For  making  another  addition  to  the  growing  Whit 
man  literature,  I  have  no  apology  to  offer.  I 
know  well  enough  that  "writing  and  talk"  cannot 
"prove"  a  poet;  that  he  must  be  his  own  proof  or 
be  forgotten;  and  my  main  purpose  in  writing  about 
Whitman,  as  in  writing  about  nature,  is  to  tell  read 
ers  what  I  have  found  there,  with  the  hope  of  indu 
cing  them  to  look  for  themselves.  At  the  same  time, 
I  may  say  that  I  think  no  modern  poet  so  much 
needs  to  be  surrounded  by  an  atmosphere  of  com 
ment  and  interpretation,  through  which  readers  may 
approach  him,  as  does  Whitman.  His  work  sprang 
from  a  habit  or  attitude  of  mind  quite  foreign  to 
that  with  which  current  literature  makes  us  familiar, 
—  so  germinal  is  it,  and  so  little  is  it  beholden  to  the 
formal  art  we  so  assiduously  cultivate.  The  poet 
says  his  work  "connects  lovingly  with  precedents," 
but  it  does  not  connect  lovingly  with  any  body  of 
poetry  of  this  century.  "  Leaves  of  Grass "  is 


8  WHITMAN 

bound  to  be  a  shock  to  the  timid  and  pampered 
taste  of  the  majority  of  current  readers.  I  would 
fain  lessen  this  shock  by  interposing  my  own  pages 
of  comment  between  the  book  and  the  public.  The 
critic  can  say  so  many  things  the  poet  cannot.  He 
can  explain  and  qualify  and  analyze,  whereas  the 
creative  artist  can  only  hint  or  project.  The  poet 
must  hasten  on,  he  must  infold  and  bind  together, 
he  must  be  direct  and  synthetic  in  every  act.  Re 
flection  and  qualification  are  not  for  him,  but  action, 
emotion,  volition,  the  procreant  blending  and  sur 
render.  He  works  as  Nature  does,  and  gives  us 
reality  in  every  line. 
Whitman  says :  — 

"I  charge  you  forever  reject  those  who  would  expound  me,  for 
I  cannot  expound  myself." 

The  type  of  mind  of  Whitman's,  which  seldom  or 
never  emerges  as  a  mere  mentality,  an  independent 
thinking  and  knowing  faculty,  but  always  as  a  person 
ality,  always  as  a  complete  human  entity,  never  can 
expound  itself,  because  its  operations  are  synthetic 
and  not  analytic,  its  mainspring  is  love  and  not 
mere  knowledge.  In  his  prose  essay  called  "A 
Backward  Glance  o'er  Travel' d  Koads,"  appended 
to  the  final  edition  of  his  poems,  Whitman  has  not 
so  much  sought  to  expound  himself  as  to  put  his 
reader  in  possession  of  his  point  of  view,  and  of 
the  considerations  that  lie  back  of  his  work.  This 
chapter  might  render  much  that  I  have  written 
superfluous,  were  there  not  always  a  distinct  gain 
in  seeing  an  author  through  another  medium,  or  in 


PRELIMINARY  9 

getting  the  equivalents  of  him  in  the  thoughts  and 
ideals  of  a  kindred  and  sympathetic  mind.  But  I 
have  not  consciously  sought  to  expound  Whitman, 
any  more  than  in  my  other  books  I  have  sought  to 
expound  the  birds  or  wild  nature.  I  have  written 
out  some  things  that  he  means  to  me,  and  the  pleas 
ure  and  profit  I  have  found  in  his  pages. 

There  is  no  end  to  what  can  be  drawn  out  of  him/' 
It  Jias  been  said  and  repeated  that  he  was  not  a 
thinker,  and  yet  I  find  more  food  for  thought  in 
him  than  in  all  other  poets.  It  has  been  often  said 
and  repeated  that  he  is  not  a  poet,  and  yet  the  read 
ers  that  respond  to  him  the  most  fully  appear  to  be 
those  in  whom  the  poetic  temperament  is  paramount. 
I  believe  he  supplies  in  fuller  measure  that  pristine 
element,  something  akin  to  the  unbreathed  air  of 
mountain  and  shore,  which  makes  the  arterial  blood 
of  poetry  and  literature,  than  any  other  modern 
writer. 

v 

We  can  make  little  of  Whitman  unless  we  allow 
him  to  be  a  law  unto  himself,  and  seek  him  through 
the  clews  which  he  himself  brings.  When  we  try 
him  by  current  modes,  current  taste,  and  demand 
of  him  formal  beauty,  formal  art,  we  are  disap 
pointed.  But  when  we  try  him  by  what  we  may 
call  the  scientific  standard,  the  standard  of  organic 
nature,  and  demand  of  him  the  yjtal  .and  the  char 
acteristic,  —  demand  of  him  that  he  have  aJaw  of  his 
own,  and  fulfill  that  law  in  the  poetic  sphere,  —  the 
result  is  quite  different. 


10  WHITMAN 

More  than  any  other  poet,  Whitman  is  what  we 
make  him;  more  than  any  other  poet,  his  greatest 
value  is  in  what  he  suggests  and  implies,  rather 
than  in  what  he  portrays ;  and  more  than  any  other 
poet  must  he  wait  to  be  understood  by  the  growth 
of  the  taste  of  himself.  "I  make  the  only  growth 
by  which  I  can  be  appreciated,"  he  truly  says. 

His  words  are  like  the  manna  that  descended 
upon  the  Israelites,  "in  which  were  all  manner  of 
tastes;  and  every  one  found  in  it  what  his  palate 
was  chiefly  pleased  with.  If  he  desired  fat  in  it,  he 
had  it.  In  it  the  young  men  tasted  bread;  the  old 
men  honey  ;  and  the  children  oil."  Many  young 
men,  —  poets,  artists,  teachers,  preachers,  —  have 
testified  that  they  have  found  bread  in  Whitman, 
the  veritable  bread  of  life;  others  have  found 
honey,  sw^et  poetic  morsels;  and  not  a  few  report 
having  found  only  gall. 

VI 

In  considering  an  original  work  like  "Leaves  of 
Grass,"  the  search  is  always  for  the  grounds  upon 
which  it  is  to  be  justified  and  explained.  These 
grounds  in  this  work  are  not  easy  to  find;  they  lie 
deeper  than  the  grounds  upon  which  the  popular 
poets  rest.  Because  they  are  not  at  once  seen, 
many  readers  have  denied  that  there  are  any  such 
grounds.  But  to  deny  a  basis  of  reality  to  a  work 
with  the  history  of  "Leaves  of  Grass,"  and  a  basis 
well  grounded  on  aesthetic  and  artistic  principles,  is 
not  to  be  thought  of. 


PRELIMINARY  11 

The  more  the  poet  eludes  us,  the  more  we  know 
he  has  his  hiding-place  somewhere.  The  more  he 
denies  our  standards,  the  more  we  know  he  has 
standards  of  his  own  which  we  must  discover;  the 
more  he  flouts  at  our  literary  conventions,  the  more 
we  must  press  him  for  his  own  principles  and 
methods.  How  does  he  justify  himself  to  him 
self?  Could  any  sane  man  have  written  the  Chil 
dren  of  Adam  poems  who  was  not  sustained  by 
deepest  moral  and  aesthetic  convictions  1  It  is  the 
business  of  the  critic  to  search  for  these  principles 
and  convictions,  and  not  shirk  the  task  by  ridicule 
and  denial. 

VII 

If  there  was  never  any  change  in  taste,  if  it 
always  ran  in  the  same  channels,  —  indeed,  if  it  did 
not  at  times  run  in  precisely  opposite  channels,  — 
there  would  be  little  hope  that  Walt  Whitman's 
poetry  would  ever  find  any  considerable  number  of 
readers.  But  one  of  the  laws  that  dominate  the 
progress  of  literature,  as  Edmund  Sherer  says,  is 
incessant  change,  not  only  in  thought  and  ideas, 
but  in  taste  and  the  starting-points  of  art.  A  radi 
cal  and  almost  violent  change  in  these  respects  is 
indicated  by  Whitman,  —  a  change  which  is  in  uni 
son  with  many  things  in  modern  life  and  morals, 
but  which  fairly  crosses  the  prevailing  taste  in 
poetry  and  in  art.  No  such  dose  of  realism  and 
individualism  under  the  guise  of  poetry  has  been 
administered  to  the  reading  public  in  this  century. 
No  such  break  with  literary  traditions  —  no  such 


12  WHITMAN 

audacious  attempt  to  tally,  in  a  printed  page,  the 
living  concrete  man,  an  actual  human  presence, 
instead  of  the  conscious,  made-up  poet  —  is  to  be 
found  in  modern  literary  records. 

VIII 

The  much  that  I  have  said  in  the  following  pages 
about  Whitman's  radical  differences  from  other  poets 
— t  his  changed  attitude  towards  the  universe,  his  un 
wonted  methods  and  aims,  etc.,  —  might  seem  to 
place  him  upon  a  ground  so  unique  and  individual 
as  to  contradict  my  claims  for  his  breadth  and  univer 
sality)  The  great  poets  stand  upon  common  ground ; 
they  excel  along  familiar  lines,  they  touch  us,  and 
touch  us  deeply,  at  many  points.  What  always  saves 
Whitman  is  his  enormous  endowment  of  what  is 
"commonest,  nearest,  easiest," —  his  atmosphere  of 
the  common  day,  the  common  life,  and  his  fund  of 
human  sympathy  and  love.  He  is  strange  because 
he  gives  us  the  familiar  in  such  a  direct,  unexpected 
manner.  His  "  Leaves  "  are  like  some  new  fruit  that 
we  have  never  before  tasted.  It  is  the  product  of  an 
other  clime,  another  hemisphere.  The  same  old  rains 
and  dews,  the  same  old  sun  and  soil,  nursed  it,  yet 
in  so  many  ways  how  novel  and  strange !  We  cer 
tainly  have  to  serve  a  certain  apprenticeship  to  this 
poet,  familiarize  ourselves  with  his  point  of  view 
and  with  his  democratic  spirit,  before  we  can  make 
much  of  him.  The  spirit  in  which  we  come  to 
him  from  the  other  poets  —  the  poets  of  art  and 
culture  —  is  for  the  most  part  unfriendly  to  him. 


PRELIMINARY  13 

There  is  something  rude,  strange,  and  unpoetic 
about  him  at  first  sight  that  is  sure  to  give  most 
readers  of  poetry  a  shock.  I  think  one  might  come 
to  him  from  the  Greek  poets,  or  the  old  Hebrew 
or  Oriental  bards,  with  less  shock  than  from  our 
modern  delicate  and  refined  singers ;  because  the  old 
poets  were  more  simple  and  elemental,  and  aimed 
less  at  the  distilled  dainties  of  poetry,  than  the  mod 
ern.  They  were  full  of  action,  too,  and  volition, 
—  of  that  which  begets  and  sustains  life.  {  Whit- 
man's  poetry  is  almost  entirely  the  expression  of 
w.ill  and  personality,  and  runs  very  little  to  intel 
lectual  subtleties  and  refinements.^  It  fulfills  itself 
in  our  wills  and  character,  rather  than  in  our  taste. 

IX 

Whitman  will  always  be  a  strange  and  unwonted 
figure  among  his  country's  poets,  and  among  Eng 
lish  poets  generally,  —  a  cropping  out  again,  after  so 
many  centuries,  of  the  old  bardic  prophetic  strain. 
Had  he  dropped  upon  us  from  some  other  sphere, 
he  could  hardly  have  been  a  greater  surprise  and 
puzzle  to  the  average  reader  or  critic.  Into  a  lit 
erature  that  was  timid,  imitative,  conventional,  he 
fell  like  leviathan  into  a  duck-pond,  and  the  com 
motion  and  consternation  he  created  there  have  not 
yet  subsided.  All  the  reigning  poets  in  this  coun 
try  except  Emejgon  denied  him,  and  many  of  our 
minor  poets  still  keep  up  a  hostile  sissing  and  cack 
ling.  He  will  probably  always  be  more  or  less  a 
stumbling-block  to  the  minor  poet,  because  of  his 


14  WHITMAN 

indifference  to  the  things  which  to  the  minor  poet 
are  all  in  all.  (^He  was  a  poet  without  what  is 
called  artistic  form,  and  without  technique,  as  that 
word  is  commonly  understood.  His  method  was 
analogous  to  the  dynamic  method  of  organic  na 
ture,  rather  than  to  the  mechanical  or  constructive 
method  of  the  popular  poets. \ 

x 

Of  course  the  first  thing  that  strikes  the  reader 
in  "Leaves  of  Grass"  is  its  seeming  oddity  and 
strangeness.  If  a  man  were  to  come  into  a  dress 
reception  in  shirt  sleeves  and  with  his  hat  on,  the 
feature  would  strike  us  at  once,  and  would  be  mag 
nified  in  our  eyes;  we  should  quite  forget  that  he 
was  a  man,  and  in  essentials  differed  but  little  from 
the  rest  of  us,  after  all.  The  exterior  habiliments 
on  such  occasions  count  for  nearly  everything;  and 
in  the  popular  poetry  rhyme,  measure,  and  the  lan 
guage  and  manners  of  the  poets  are  much  more 
than  anything  else.  If  Whitman  did  not  do  any 
thing  so  outre  as  to  come  into  a  dress  reception 
with  his  coat  off  and  his  hat  on,  he  did  come  into 
the  circle  of  the  poets  without  the  usual  poetic 
habiliments.  He  was  not  dressed  up  at  all,  and 
he  was  not  at  all  abashed  or  apologetic.  His  air 
was  confident  and  self-satisfied,  if  it  did  not  at 
times  suggest  the  insolent  and  aggressive.  It  was 
the  dress  circle  that  was  on  trial,  and  not  Walt 
Whitman. 

We  could  forgive  a  man  in  real  life  for  such  an 


PRELIMINARY  15 

audacious  proceeding  only  on  the  ground  of  his  be 
ing  something  extraordinary  as  a  person,  with  an 
extraordinary  message  to  convey;  and  we  can  par 
don  the  poet  only  on  precisely  like  grounds.  He 
must  make  us  forget  his  unwonted  garb  by  his 
unique  and  lovable  personality,  and  the  power  and 
wisdom  of  his  utterance.  If  he  cannot  do  this  we 
shall  soon  tire  of  him. 

That  Whitman  was  a  personality  the  like  of 
which  the  world  has  not  often  seen,  and  that  his 
message  to  his  country  and  to  his  race  was  of  prime 
importance,  are  conclusions  at  which  more  and  more 
thinking  persons  are  surely  arriving. 

His  want  of  art,  of  which  we  have  heard  so  much, 
is,  it  seems  to  me,  just  this  want  of  the  usual  trap 
pings  and  dress  uniform  of  the  poets.  In  the  essen 
tials  of  art,  the  creative  imagination,  the  plastic  and 
quickening  spirit,  the  power  of  identification  with 
the  thing  contemplated,  and  the  absolute  use  of 
words,  he  has  few  rivals. 

XI 

I  make  no  claim  that  my  essay  is  a  dispassionate, 
disinterested  view  of  Whitman.  It  will  doubtless 
appear  to  many  as  a  one-sided  view,  or  as  colored 
by  my  love  for  the  man  himself.  And  I  shall  not 
be  disturbed  if  such  turns  out  to  be  the  case.  A 
dispassionate  view  of  a  man  like  Whitman  is  prob 
ably  out  of  the  question  in  our  time,  or  in  any  near 
time.  His  appeal  is  so  personal  and  direct  that 
readers  are  apt  to  be  either  violently  for  him  or 


16  WHITMAN 

violently  against,  and  it  will  require  the  perspective 
of  more  than  one  generation  to  bring  out  his  true 
significance.  Still,  for  any  partiality  for  its  subject 
which  my  book  may  show,  let  me  take  shelter  be 
hind  a  dictum  of  Goethe. 

"I  am  more  and  more  convinced,"  says  the  great 
critic,  "  that  whenever  one  has  to  vent  an  opinion 
on  the  actions  or  on  the  writings  of  others,  unless 
this  be  done  from  a  certain  one-sided  enthusiasm, 
or  from  a  loving  interest  in  the  person  and  the 
work,  the  result  is  hardly  worth  gathering  up. 
Sympathy  and  enjoyment  in  what  we  see  is  in  fact 
the  only  reality,  and,  from  such  reality,  reality  as 
a  natural  product  follows.  All  else  is  vanity." 

To  a  loving  interest  in  Whitman  and  his  work, 
which  may  indeed  amount  to  one-sided  enthusiasm, 
I  plead  guilty.  This  at  least  is  real  with  me,  and 
not  affected ;  and,  if  the  reality  which  Goethe  pre 
dicts  in  such  cases  only  follows,  I  shall  be  more 
than  content. 

XII 

In  the  world  of  literature,  as  in  the  world  of 
physical  forces,  things  adjust  themselves  after  a 
while,  and  no  impetus  can  be  given  to  any  man's 
name  or  fame  that  will  finally  carry  it  beyond  the 
limit  of  his  real  worth.  However  "  one-sided  "  my 
enthusiasm  for  Whitman  may  be,  or  that  of  any  of 
his  friends  may  be,  there  is  no  danger  but  that  in 
time  he  will  find  exactly  his  proper  place  and  level. 
My  opinion,  or  any  man's  opinion,  of  the  works  of 


PRELIMINARY  17 

another,  is  like  a  wind  that  blows  for  a  moment 
across  the  water,  heaping  it  up  a  little  on  the  shore 
or  else  beating  it  down,  but  not  in  any  way  perma 
nently  affecting  its  proper  level. 

The  adverse  winds  that  have  blown  over  Whit 
man's  work  have  been  many  and  persistent,  and  yet 
the  tide  has  surely  risen,  his  fame  has  slowly  in 
creased. 

It  will  soon  be  forty  years  since  he  issued  the 
first  thin  quarto  edition  of  "Leaves  of  Grass,"  and, 
though  the  opposition  to  him  has  been  the  most 
fierce  and  determined  ever  recorded  in  our  literary 
history,  often  degenerating  into  persecution  and 
willful  misrepresentation,  yet  his  fame  has  steadily 
grown  both  at  home  and  abroad.  The  impression 
he  early  made  upon  such  men  as  Emerson,  Thoreau, 
William  O'Connor,  Mr.  Stedman,  Colonel  Ingersoll, 
and  others  in  this  country,  and  upon  Professors 
Dowden  and  Clifford,  upon  Symonds,  Kuskin,  Ten 
nyson,  Rossetti,  Lord  Lytton,  Mr.  Gilchrist,  George 
Eliot,  in  England,  has  been  followed  by  an  equally 
deep  or  deeper  impression  upon  many  of  the  younger 
and  bolder  spirits  of  both  hemispheres.  In  fact 
WTiitman  saw  his  battle  essentially  won  in  his  own 
lifetime,  though  his  complete  triumph  is  of  course 
a  matter  of  the  distant  future. 

XIII 

But  let  me  give  without  further  delay  a  fuller  hint 
of  the  attitude  these  pages  assume  and  hold  towards 
the  subject  they  discuss. 


18  WHITMAN 

There  are  always,  or  nearly  always,  a  few  men 
born  to  each  generation  who  embody  the  best 
thought  and  culture  of  that  generation,  and  express 
it  in  approved  literary  forms.  From  Petrarch  down 
to  Lowell,  the  lives  and  works  of  these  men  fill  the 
literary  annals;  they  uphold  the  literary  and  schol 
arly  traditions;  they  are  the  true  men  of  letters; 
they  are  justly  honored  and  beloved  in  their  day 
and  land.  We  in  this  country  have  recently,  in  the 
death  of  Dr,  Holmes,  mourned  the  loss  of  the  last 
of  the  New  England  band  of  such  men.  We  are 
all  indebted  to  them  for  solace,  and  for  moral  and 
intellectual  stimulus. 

Then,  much  more  rarely,  there  is  born  to  a  race 
or  people  men  who  are  like  an  irruption  of  life 
from  another  world,  who  belong  to  another  order, 
who  bring  other  standards,  and  sow  the  seed  of  new 
and  larger  types;  who  are  not  the  organs  of  the 
culture  or  modes  of  their  time,  and  whom  their  times 
for  the  most  part  decry  and  disown,  —  the  primal, 
original,  elemental  men.  It  is  here,  in  my  opin 
ion,  that  we  must  place  Whitman;  not  among  the 
minstrels  and  edifiers  of  his  age,  but  among  its 
prophets  and  saviors.  He  is  nearer  the  sources  of 
things  than  the  popular  poets,  —  nearer  the  found 
ers  and  discoverers,  closer  akin  to  the  large,  fervent, 
prophetic,  patriarchal  men  who  figure  in  the  early 
heroic  ages.  His  work  ranks  with  the  great  primi 
tive  books.  He  is  of  the  type  of  the  skald,  the 
bard,  the  seer,  the  prophet.  The  specialization  and 
differentation  of  our  latter  ages  of  science  arid  cul- 


v  PRELIMINARY  19 

ture  is  less  marked  in  him  than  in  other  poets. 
Poetry,  philosophy,  religion,  are  all  inseparably 
blended  in  his  pages.  He  is  in  many  ways  a  rever 
sion  to  an  earlier  type.  Dr.  Brinton  has  remarked 
that  his  attitude  toward  the  principle  of  sex  and  his 
use  of  sexual  imagery  in  his  poems,  are  the  same 
as  in  the  more  primitive  religions.  Whitman  was 
not  a  poet  by  elaboration,  but  by  suggestion;  not 
an  artist  by  formal  presentation,  but  by  spirit  and 
conception;  not  a  philosopher  by  system  and  after 
thought,  but  by  vision  and  temper. 

In  his  "Leaves,"  we  again  hear  the  note  of  des 
tiny,  —  again  see  the  universal  laws  and  forces  exem 
plified  in  the  human  personality,  and  turned  upon 
life  with  love  and  triumph. 

XIV 

The  world  always  has  trouble  with  its  primary 
men,  or  with  the  men  who  have  any  primary  gifts, 
like  Emerson,  Wordsworth,  Browning,  Tolstoi,  Ib 
sen.  The  idols  of  an  age  are  nearly  always  secon 
dary  men :  they  break  no  new  ground ;  they  make 
no  extraordinary  demands ;  our  tastes  and  wants  are 
already  adjusted  to  their  type;  we  understand  and 
approve  of  them  at  once.  The  primary  men  dis 
turb  us ;  they  are  a  summons  and  a  challenge ;  they 
break  up  the  old  order;  they  open  up  new  territory 
which  we  are  to  subdue  and  occupy;  the  next  age 
and  the  next  make  more  of  them.  In  my  opinion, 
the  next  age  and  the  next  will  make  more  of  Whit 
man,  and  the  next  still  more,  because  he  is  in  the 


20  WHITMAN 

great  world- current,  in  the  line  of  the  evolutionary 
movement  of  our  time.  Is  it  at  all  probable  that 
Tennyson  can  ever  be  to  any  other  age'  what  he  has 
been  to  this  ?  Tennyson  marks  an  expiring  age,  the 
sunset  of  the  feudal  world.  He  did  not  share  the 
spirit  to  which  the  future  belongs.  There  was  not 
one  drop  of  democratic  blood  in  his  veins.  To  him, 
the  people  were  an  hundred-headed  beast. 

xv 

If  my  essay  seems  like  one  continual  strain  to 
attain  the  unattainable,  to  compass  and  define  Whit 
man,  who  will  not  be  compassed  and  defined,  I  can 
only  say  that  I  regret  it,  but  could  not  well  help  it. 
Talking  about  Whitman,  Symonds  said,  was  like 
talking  about  the  universe,  and  it  is  so.  There  is 
somewhat  incommensurable  in  his  works.  One  may 
not  hope  to  speak  the  final  word  about  him,  to  sum 
him  up  in  a  sentence.  He  is  so  palpable,  so  real, 
so  near  at  hand,  that  the  critic  or  expounder  of  him 
promises  himself  an  easy  victory;  but  before  one 
can  close  with  him  he  is  gone.  He  is,  after  all,  as 
subtle  and  baffling  as  air  or  light. 

.  .  .  "I  will  certainly  elude  you, 
Even  while  you  should  think  you  had  unquestionably  caught 

me,  behold! 
Already  you  see  I  have  escaped  from  you." 

It  is  probably  this  characteristic  which  makes 
Whitman  an  irrepressible  figure  in  literature;  he 
will  not  down  for  friend  or  foe.  He  escapes  from 
all  classification,  and  is  larger  than  any  definition 


PRELIMINARY  21 

of  him  that  has  yet  been  given.  How  many  times 
has  he  been  exploded  by  British  and  American  crit 
ics;  how  many  times  has  he  been  labeled  and  put 
upon  the  shelf,  only  to  reappear  again  as  vigorous 
and  untranslatable  as  ever! 

XVI 

So  far  as  Whitman  stands  merely  for  the  spirit 
of  revolt,  or  of  reaction  against  current  modes  in 
life  and  literature,  I  have  little  interest  in  him. 
As  the  "apostle  of  the  rough,  the  uncouth,"  to  use 
Mr.  Ho  wells 's  words,  the  world  would  long  ago 
have  tired  of  him.  The  irruption  into  letters  of 
the  wild  and  lawless,  or  of  the  strained  and  eccen 
tric,  can  amuse  and  interest  us  only  for  a  moment. 
It  is  because  these  are  only  momentary  phases  of 
him,  as  it  were,  and  because  underneath  all  he  em 
braces  the  whole  of  life  and  ministers  to  it,  that  his 
fame  and  influence  are  still  growing  in  the  world. 
/"  One  hesitates  even  to  call  Whitman  the  poet  of 
"democracy,"  or  of  "personality,"  or  of  "the  mod 
ern,  "  because  such  terms  only  half  define  him.  He 
quickly  escapes  into  that  large  and  universal  air 
which  all  great  art  breathes.  We  cannot  sum  him 
up  in  a  phrase.  He  flows  out  on  all  sides,  and  his 
sympathies  embrace  all  types  and  conditions  of  men. 
He  is  a  great  democrat,  but,  first  and  last  and  over  all, 
he  is  a  great  man,  a  great  nature,  and  deep  world- 
currents  course  through  him.  He  is  distinctively 
an  American  poet,  but  his  Americanism  is  only  the 
door  through  which  he  enters  upon  the  universal. 


22  WHITMAN 

XVII 

Call  his  work  poetry  or  prose,  or  what  you  will: 
that  it  is  an  inspired  utterance  of  some  sort,  any 
competent  person  ought  to  be  able  to  see.  And 
what  else  do  we  finally  demand  of  any  work  than 
that  it  be  inspired  1  How  all  questions  of  form  and 
art,  and  all  other  questions,  sink  into  insignificance 
beside  that!  The  exaltation  of  mind  and  spirit 
shown  in  the  main  body  of  Whitman's  work,  the 
genuine,  prophetic  fervor,  the  intensification  and 
amplification  of  the  simple  ego,  and  the  resultant 
raising  of  all  human  values,  seem  to  me  as  plain 
as  daylight. 

Whitman  is  to  be  classed  among  the  great  names 
by  the  breadth  and  all-inclusiveness  of  his  theme 
and  by  his  irrepressible  personality.  I  think  it 
highly  probable  that  future  scholars  and  critics  will 
find  his  work  fully  as  significant  and  era-marking 
as  that  of  any  of  the  few  supreme  names  of  the 
past.  It  is  the  culmination  of  an  age  of  individ 
ualism,  and,  as  opposites  meet,  it  is  -also  the  best 
lesson  in  nationalism  and  universal  charity  that  this 
century  has  seen. 


BIOGRAPHICAL   AND  PERSONAL 


TTTALT  WHITMAN  was  born  at  West  Hills, 
**  Long  Island,  May  30,  1819,  and  died  at 
Camden,  N.  J.,  March  26,  1892.  Though  born  in 
the  country,  most  of  his  life  was  passed  in  cities; 
first  in  Brooklyn  and  New  York,  then  in  New  Or 
leans,  then  in  Washington,  and  lastly  in  Camden, 
where  his  body  is  buried.  It  was  a  poet's  life  from 
first  to  last, —  free,  unhampered,  unworldly,  uncon^ 
ventional,  picturesque,  simple,  untouched  by  the  craze 
of  money-getting,  unselfish,  devoted  to  others,  and 
\vas,  on  the  whole,  joyfully  and  contentedly  lived. 
It  was  a  pleased  and  interested  saunter  through  the 
world,  —  no  hurry,  no  fever,  no  strife ;  hence  no 
bitterness,  no  depletion,  no  wasted  energies.  A 
farm  boy,  then  a  school-teacher,  then  a  printer,  ed 
itor,  writer,  traveler,  mechanic,  nurse  in  the  army 
hospitals,  and  lastly  government  clerk;  large  and 
picturesque  of  figure,  slow  of  movement;  tolerant, 
passive,  receptive,  and  democratic,  —  of  the  people ; 
in  all  his  tastes  and  attractions,  always  aiming  to 
walk  abreast  with  the  great  laws  and  forces,  and  to 
live  thoroughly  in  the  free,  nonchalant  spirit  of  his 


24  WHITMAN 

own  day  and  land.  His  strain  was  mingled  Dutch 
and  English,  with  a  decided  Quaker  tinge,  which 
came  from  his  mother's  side,  and  which  had  a 
marked  influence  upon  his  work. 

The  spirit  that  led  him  to  devote  his  time  and 
suhstance  to  the  sick  and  wounded  soldiers  during 
the  war  may  be  seen  in  that  earlier  incident  in  his 
life  when  he  drove  a  Broadway  stage  all  one  win 
ter,  that  a  disabled  driver  might  lie  by  without 
starving  his  family.  It  is  from  this  episode  that 
the  tradition  of  his  having  been  a  New  York  stage- 
driver  comes.  He  seems  always  to  have  had  a  spe 
cial  liking  for  this  class  of  workmen.  One  of  the 
house  surgeons  of  the  old  New  York  Hospital  relates 
that  in  the  latter  part  of  the  fifties  Whitman  was 
a  frequent  visitor  to  that  institution,  looking  after 
and  ministering  to  disabled  stage  drivers.  "These 
drivers,"  says  the  doctor,  "like  those  of  the  omni 
buses  in  London,  were  a  set  of  men  by  themselves. 
A  good  deal  of  strength,  intelligence,  and  skillful 
management  of  horses  was  required  of  a  Broadway 
stage-driver.  He  seems  to  have  been  decidedly  a 
higher  order  of  man  than  the  driver  of  the  present 
horse-cars.  He  usually  had  his  primary  education 
in  the  country,  and  graduated  as  a  thorough  expert 
in  managing  a  very  difficult  machine,  in  an  excep 
tionally  busy  thoroughfare. 

"  It  was  this  kind  of  a  man  that  so  attracted  Walt 
Whitman  that  he  was  constantly  to  be  seen  perched 
on  the  box  alongside  one  of  them  going  up  and 
down  Broadway.  I  often  watched  the  poet  and 


BIOGRAPHICAL  AND   PERSONAL  25 

driver,  as  probably  did  many  another  New  Yorker 
in  those  days. 

"I  do  not  wonder  as  much  now  as  I  did  in  1860 
that  a  man  like  Walt  Whitman  became  interested  in 
these  drivers.  He  was  not  interested  in  the  news 
of  every-day  life  —  the  murders  and  accidents  and 
political  convulsions  —  but  he  was  interested  in 
strong  types  of  human  character.  We  young  men 
had  not  had  experience  enough  to  understand  this 
kind  of  a  man..  It  seems  to  me  now  that  we 
looked  at  Whitman  simply  as  a  kind  of  crank,  if 
the  word  had  then  been  invented.  His  talk  to  us 
was  chiefly  of  books,  and  the  men  who  wrote  them: 
especially  of  poetry,  and  what  he  considered  poetry. 
He  never  said  much  of  the  class  whom  he  visited 
in  our  wards,  after  he  had  satisfied  himself  of  the 
nature  of  the  injury  and  of  the  prospect  of  recovery. 

"Whitman  appeared  to  be  about  forty  years  of 
age  at  that  time.  He  was  always  dressed  in  a  blue 
flannel  coat  and  vest,  with  gray  and  baggy  trousers. 
He  wore  a  woolen  shirt,  with  a  Byronic  collar,  low 
in  the  neck,  without  a  cravat,  as  I  remember,  and 
a  large  felt  hat.  His  hair  was  iron  gray,  and  he 
had  a  full  beard  and  mustache  of  the  same  color. 
His  face  and  neck  were  bronzed  by  exposure  to 
the  sun  and  air.  He  was  large,  and  gave  the  im 
pression  of  being  a  vigorous  man.  He  was  scru 
pulously  careful  of  his  simple  attire,  and  his  hands 
were  soft  and  hairy." 

During  the  early  inception  of  "  Leaves  of  Grass  " 
he  was  a  carpenter  in  Brooklyn,  building  and  sell- 


26  WHITMAN 

ing  small  frame-houses  to  working  people.  He 
frequently  knocked  off  work  to  write  his  poems. 
In  his  life  Whitman  was  never  one  of  the  restless, 
striving  sort.  In  this  respect  he  was  not  typical 
of  his  countrymen.  All  his  urgency  and  strenu- 
ousness  he  reserved  for  his  book.  He  seems  al 
ways  to  have  been  a  sort  of  visitor  in  life,  noting, 
observing,  absorbing,  keeping  aloof  from  all  ties 
that  would  hold  him,  and  making  the  most  of  the 
hour  and  the  place  in  which  he  happened  to  be. 
He  was  in  no  sense  a  typical  literary  man.  During 
his  life  in  New  York  and  Brooklyn,  we  see  him 
moving  entirely  outside  the  fashionable  circles,  the 
learned  circles,  the  literary  circles,  the  money-get 
ting  circles.  He  belongs  to  no  set  or  club.  He  is 
seen  more  with  the  laboring  classes,  —  drivers,  boat 
men,  mechanics,  printers,  —  and  I  suspect  may  often 
be  found  with  publicans  and  sinners.  He  is  fond 
of  the  ferries  and  of  the  omnibuses.  He  is  a  fre 
quenter  of  the  theatre  and  of  the  Italian  opera. 
Alboni  makes  a  deep  and  lasting  impression  upon 
him.  It  is  probably  to  her  that  he  writes  these 
lines :  — 

"  Here  take  this  gift, 

I  was  reserving  it  for  some  hero,  speaker,  general, 

One  who  should  serve  the  good  old  cause,  the  great  idea,  the 

progress  and  freedom  of  the  race, 
Some  brave  confronler  of  despots,  some  daring  rebel; 
But  I  see  that  what  I>was  reserving  belongs  to  you  just  as  much 

as  to  any." 

Elsewhere  he  refers  to  Alboni  by  name  and  speaks 
of  her  as 


BIOGRAPHICAL  AND  PERSONAL       27 

"  The  lustrous  orb,  Venus  contralto,  the  blooming  mother, 
Sister  of  loftiest  gods." 

Some  of  his  poems  were  written  at  the  opera. 
The  great  singers  evidently  gave  him  clews  and 
suggestions  that  were  applicable  to  his  own  art. 

(His  study  was  out  of  doors.  He  wrote  on  the 
street,  on  the  ferry,  at  the  seaside,  in  the  fields, 
at  the  opera,  —  always  from  living  impulses  arising 
at  the  moment,  and  always  with  his  eye  upon  the 
fact.  He  says  he  has  read  his  "  Leaves  "  to  himself 
in  the  open  air,  and  tried  them  by  the  realities  of 
life  and  nature  about  him.  Were  they  as  real  and 
alive  as  they  ?  —  this  was  the  only  question  with 
him.) 

At  home  in  his  father's  family  in  Brooklyn  we 
see  him  gentle,  patient,  conciliatory,  much  looked 
up  to  by  all.  Neighbors  seek  his  advice.  He  is 
cool,  deliberate,  impartial.  A  marked  trait  is  his 
indifference  to  money  matters;  his  people  are  often 
troubled  because  he  lets  opportunities  to  make 
money  pass  by.  When  his  "Leaves"  appear,  his 
family  are  puzzled,  do  not  know  what  to  make  of 
it.  His  mother  thinks  that,  if  "Hiawatha"  is 
poetry,  may  be  Walt's  book  is,  too.  He  never 
counsels  with  any  one,  and  is.  utterly  indifferent  as 
to  what  people  may  say  or  think.  He  is  not  a 
stirring  and  punctual  man,  is  always  a  little  late; 
riot  an  early  riser,  not  prompt  at  dinner;  always  has 
ample  time,  and  will  not  be  hurried ;  the  business 
gods  do  not  receive  his  homage.  He  is  gray  at 
thirty,  and  is  said  to  have  had  a  look  of  age  in 


28  WHITMAN 

youth,  as  he  had  a  look  of  youth  in  age.  He 
has  few  books,  cares  little  for  sport,  never  uses  a 
gun;  has  no  bad  habits;  has  no  entanglements  with 
women,  and  apparently  never  contemplates  marriage. 
It  is  said  that  during  his  earliest  years  of  manhood 
he  kept  quite  aloof  from  the  "girls." 

At  the  age  of  nineteen  he  edited  "The  Long 
Islander,"  published  at  Huntington.  A  recent  vis 
itor  to  these  early  haunts  of  Whitman  gathered 
some  reminiscences  of  him  at  this  date :  — 

"Amid  the  deep  re  very  of  nature,  on  that  mild 
October  afternoon,  we  returned  to  the  village  of 
Huntington,  there  to  meet  the  few,  the  very  few, 
survivors  who  recall  Walt's  first  appearance  in  the 
literary  world  as  the  editor  of  c  The  Long  Islander, ' 
nigh  sixty  years  ago  (1838).  Two  of  these  fore 
fathers  of  the  hamlet  clearly  remembered  his  power 
ful  personality,  brimful  of  life,  reveling  in  strength, 
careless  of  time  and  the  world,  of  money  and  of  toil ; 
a  lover  of  books  and  of  jokes;  delighting  to  gather 
round  him  the  youth  of  the  village  in  his  printing- 
room  of  evenings,  and  tell  them  stories  and  read 
them  poetry,  his  own  and  others'.  That  of  his 
own  he  called  his  *  Yawps, '  a  word  which  he  after 
wards  made  famous.  Both  remembered  him  as  a 
delightful  companion,  generous  to  a  fault,  glorying 
in  youth,  negligent  of  his  affairs,  issuing  '  The 
Long  Islander  '  at  random  intervals,  —  once  a  week, 
once  in  two  weeks,  once  in  three,  —  until  its  finan 
cial  backers  lost  faith  and  hope  and  turned  him 
out,  and  with  him  the  whole  office  corps;  for  Walt 


BIOGRAPHICAL  AND  PERSONAL       29 

himself  was  editor,  publisher,  compositor,  pressman, 
and  printer's  devil,  all  in  one." 

ii 

Few  men  were  so  deeply  impressed  by  our  Civil 
War  as  was  Whitman.  It  aroused  all  his  patriotism, 
all  his  sympathies,  and,  as  a  poet,  tested  his  power 
to  deal  with  great  contemporary  events  and  scenes. 
He  was  first  drawn  to  the  seat  of  war  on  behalf  of 
his  brother,  Lieutenant- Colonel  George  W.  Whit 
man,  51st  New  York  Volunteers,  who  was  wounded 
by  the  fragment  of  a  shell  at  Fredericksburg.  This 
was  in  the  fall  of  1862.  This  brought  him  in 
contact  with  the  sick  and  wounded  soldiers,  and 
henceforth,  as  long  as  the  war  lasts  and  longer, 
he  devoted  his  time  and  substance  to  ministering  to 
them.  The  first  two  or  three  years  of  his  life  in 
Washington  he  supported  himself  by  correspond 
ence  with  Northern  newspapers,  mainly  with  the 
"New  York  Times."  These  letters,  as  well  as  the 
weekly  letters  to  his  mother  during  the  same  period, 
form  an  intensely  pathetic  and  interesting  record. 

They  contain  such  revelations  of  himself,  and  such 
pictures  of  the  scenes  he  moved  among,  that  I  shall 
here  quote  freely  from  them.  The  following  ex 
tract  is  from  a  letter  written  from  Fredericksburg 
the  third  or  fourth  day  after  the  battle  of  December, 
1862:  — 

"  Spent  a  good  part  of  the  day  in  a  large  brick 
mansion  on  the  banks  of  the  Rappahannock,  im 
mediately  opposite  Fredericksburg.  It  is  used  as 


30  WHITMAN 

a  hospital  since  the  battle,  and  seems  to  have  re 
ceived  only  the  worst  cases.  Out  of  doors,  at  the 
foot  of  a  tree,  within  ten  yards  of  the  front  of  the 
house,  I  notice  a  heap  of  amputated  feet,  legs, 
arms,  hands,  etc.,  about  a  load  for  a  one-horse  cart. 
Several  dead  bodies  lie  near,  each  covered  with  its 
brown  woolen  blanket.  In  the  door-yard,  toward 
the  river,  are  fresh  graves,  mostly  of  officers,  their 
names  on  pieces  of  barrel-staves,  or  broken  board, 
stuck  in  the  dirt.  (Most  of  these  bodies  were  sub 
sequently  taken  up  and  transported  North  to  their 
friends. ) 

"The  house  is  quite  crowded,  everything  im 
promptu,  no  system,  all  bad  enough,  but  I  have  no 
doubt  the  best  that  can  be  done;  all  the  wounds 
pretty  bad,  some  frightful,  the  men  in  their  old 
clothes,  unclean  and  bloody.  Some  of  the  wounded 
are  rebel  officers,  prisoners.  One,  a  Mississippian, 
—  a  captain,  —  hit  badly  in  leg,  I  talked  with  some 
time;  he  asked  me  for  papers,  which  I  gave  him. 
(I  saw  him  three  months  afterward  in  Washington, 
with  leg  amputated,  doing  well.) 

"I  went"  through  the  rooms,  down  stairs  and  up. 
Some  of  the  men  were  dying./  I  had  nothing  to 
give  at  that  visit,  but  wrote  a  few  letters  to  folks 
home,  mothers,  etc.  Also  talked  to  three  or  four 
who  seemed  most  susceptible  to  it,  and  needing  it." 

"  December  22  to  31.  —  Am  among  the  regimen 
tal,  brigade,  and  division  hospitals  somewhat.  Few 
at  home  realize  that  these  are  merely  tents,  and  some 
times  very  poor  ones,  the  wounded  lying  on  the 


BIOGRAPHICAL   AND   PERSONAL  31 

ground,  lucky  if  their  blanket  is  spread  on  a  layer 
of  pine  or  hemlock  twigs,  or  some  leaves.  No 
cots;  seldom  even  a  mattress  on  the  ground.  It  is 
pretty  cold.  I  go  around  from  one  case  to  another. 
I  do  not  see  that  I  can  do  any  good,  but  I  cannot 
leave  them.  Once  in  a  while  some  youngster  holds 
on  to  me  convulsively,  and  I  do  what  I  can  for 
him;  at  any  rate,  stop  with  him  and  sit  near  him 
for  hours,  if  he  wishes  it. 

"  Besides  the  hospitals,  I  also  go  occasionally  on 
long  tours  through  the  camps,  talking  with  the 
men,  etc. ;  sometimes  at  night  among  the  groups 
around  the  fires,  in  their  shebang  enclosures  of 
bushes.  I  soon  get  acquainted  anywhere  in  camp, 
with  officers  or  men,  and  am  always  well  used. 
Sometimes  I  go  down  on  picket  with  the  regiments 
I  know  best." 

After  continuing  in  front  through  the  winter,  he 
returns  to  Washington,  where  the  wounded  and 
sick  have  mainly  been  concentrated.  The  Capital 
city,  truly,  is  now  one  huge  hospital;  and  there 
Whitman  establishes  himself,  and  thenceforward, 
for  several  years,  has  but  one  daily  and  nightly 
avocation. 

He  alludes  to  writing  letters  by  the  bedside,  and 
says : — 

"I  do  a  good  deal  of  this,  of  course,  writing 
all  kinds,  including  love-letters.  Many  sick  and 
wounded  soldiers  have  not  written  home  to  parents, 
brothers,  sisters,  and  even  wives,  for  one  reason  or 
another,  for  a  long,  long  time.  Some  are  poor 


32  WHITMAN 

writers,  some  cannot  get  paper  and  envelopes;  many 
have  an  aversion  to  writing,  because  they  dread  to 
worry  the  folks  at  home,  —  the  facts  about  them 
are  so  sad  to  tell.  I  always  encourage  the  men  to 
write,  and  promptly  write  for  them." 

A  glimpse  of  the  scenes  after  Chancellorsville :  — 
"As  I  write  this,  in  May,  1863,  the  wounded 
have  begun  to  arrive  from  Hooker's  command  from 
bloody  Chancellorsville.  I  was  down  among  the 
first  arrivals.  The  men  in  charge  of  them  told  me 
the  bad  cases  were  yet  to  come.  If  that  is  so,  I 
pity  them,  for  these  are  bad  enough.  You  ought 
to  see  the  scene  of  the  wounded  arriving  at  the 
landing  here  foot  of  Sixth  Street  at  night.  Two 
boat-loads  came  about  half  past  seven  last  night. 
A  little  after  eight,  it  rained  a  long  and  violent 
shower.  The  poor,  pale,  helpless  soldiers  had  been 
debarked,  and  lay  around  on  the  wharf  and  neigh 
borhood  anywhere.  The  rain  was,  probably,  grate 
ful  to  them;  at  any  rate  they  were  exposed  to  it. 

"The  few  torches  light  up  the  spectacle.  All 
around  on  the  wharf,  on  the  ground,  out  on  side 
places,  etc.,  the  men  are  lying  on  blankets  and  old 
quilts,  with  the  bloody  rags  bound  round  heads, 
arms,  legs,  etc.  The  attendants  are  few,  and  at 
night  few  outsiders  also,  —  only  a  few  hard-worked 
transportation  men  and  drivers.  (The  wounded  are 
getting  to  be  common,  and  people  grow  callous.) 
The  men,  whatever  their  condition,  lie  there,  and 
patiently  wait  till  their  turn  comes  to  be  taken  up. 
Near  by  the  ambulances  are  now  arriving  in  clus- 


BIOGRAPHICAL  AND  PERSONAL       33 

ters,  and  one  after  another  is  called  to  back  up 
and  take  its  load.  Extreme  cases  are  sent  off  on 
stretchers.  The  men  generally  make  little  or  no 
ado,  whatever  their  sufferings,  —  a  few  groans  that 
cannot  be  repressed,  and  occasionally  a  scream  of 
pain,  as  they  lift  a  man  into  the  ambulance. 

"To-day,  as  I  write,  hundreds  more  are  expected, 
and  to-morrow  and  the  next  day  more,  and  so  on 
for  many  days. 

11  The  soldiers  are  nearly  all  young  men,  and  far 
more  American  than  is  generally  supposed,  —  I 
should  say  nine  tenths  are  native-born.  Among 
the  arrivals  from  Chancellorsville  I  find  a  large 
proportion  of  Ohio,  Indiana,  and  Illinois  men.  As 
usual,  there  are  all  sorts  of  wounds.  Some  of  the 
men  are  fearfully  burnt  from  the  explosion  of  artil 
lery  caissons.  One  ward  has  a  long  row  of  officers, 
some  with  ugly  hurts.  Yesterday  was,  perhaps, 
worse  than  usual.  Amputations  are  going  on,  — 
the  attendants  are  dressing  wounds.  As  you  pass 
by,  you  must  be  on  your  guard  where  you  look.  I 
saw,  the  other  day,  a  gentleman  —  a  visitor,  appar 
ently,  from  curiosity  —  in  one  of  the  wards  stop  and 
turn  a  moment  to  look  at  an  awful  wound  they 
were  probing,  etc.  He  turned  pale,  and  in  a  mo 
ment  more  he  had  fainted  away  and  fallen  on  the 
floor." 

An  episode,  —  the  death  of  a  New  York  sol 
dier  :  — 

"This  afternoon,  July  22,  1863,  I  spent  a  long 
time  with  a  young  man  I  have  been  with  a  good 


34  WHITMAN 

deal  from  time  to  time,  named  Oscar  F.  Wilber, 
company  G,  154th  New  York,  low  with  chronic 
diarrhoea,  and  a  bad  wound  also.  He  asked  me  to 
read  him  a  chapter  in  the  New  Testament.  I  com 
plied,  and  asked  him  what  I  should  read.  He  said : 
*  Make  your  own  choice. '  I  opened  at  the  close  of 
one  of  the  first  books  of  the  Evangelists,  and  read 
the  chapters  describing  the  latter  hours  of  Christ 
and  the  scenes  at  the  crucifixion.  The  poor,  wasted 
young  man  asked  me  to  read  the  following  chapter 
also,  how  Christ  rose  again.  I  read  very  slowly, 
as  Oscar  was  feeble.  It  pleased  him  very  much, 
yet  the  tears  were  in  his  eyes.  He  asked  me  if  I 
enjoyed  religion.  I  said:  'Perhaps  not,  my  dear, 
in  the  way  you  mean,  and  yet,  maybe,  it  is  the 
same  thing. '  He  said :  '  It  is  my  chief  reliance. ' 
He  talked  of  death,  and  said  he  did  not  fear  it.  I 
said:  'Why,  Oscar,  don't  you  think  you  will  get 
well  ? '  He  said :  '  I  may,  but  it  is  not  probable. ' 
He  spoke  calmly  of  his  condition.  The  wound  was 
very  bad;  it  discharged  much.  Then  the  diarrhoea 
had  prostrated  him,  and  I  felt  that  he  was  even 
then  the  same  as  dying.  He  behaved  very  manly 
and  affectionate.  The  kiss  I  gave  him  as  I  was 
about  leaving  he  returned  fourfold.  He  gave  me 
his  mother's  address,  Mrs.  Sally  D.  Wilber,  Alle- 
ghany  post-office,  Cattaraugus  County,  New  York. 
I  had  several  such  interviews  with  him.  He  died 
a  few  days  after  the  one  just  described." 

And  here,  also,  a  characteristic  scene  in  another  of 
those  long  barracks :  — 


BIOGRAPHICAL  AND  PERSONAL       35 

"It  is  Sunday  afternoon  (middle  of  summer, 
1864),  hot  and  oppressive,  and  very  silent  through 
the  ward.  I  am  taking  care  of  a  critical  case,  now 
lying  in  a  half  lethargy.  Near  where  I  sit  is  a 
suffering  rebel,  from  the  8th  Louisiana;  his  name 
is  Irving.  He  has  been  here  a  long  time,  badly 
wounded,  and  has  lately  had  his  leg  amputated. 
It  is  not  doing  very  well.  Eight  opposite  me  is  a 
sick  soldier  boy,  laid  down  with  his  clothes  on, 
sleeping,  looking  much  wasted,  his  pallid  face  on 
his  arm.  I  see  by  the  yellow  trimming  on  his 
jacket  that  he  is  a  cavalry  boy.  He  looks  so  hand 
some  as  he  sleeps,  one  must  needs  go  nearer  to  him. 
I  step  softly  over  to  him,  and  find  by  his  card  that 
he  is  named  William  Cone,  of  the  1st  Maine  Cav 
alry,  and  his  folks  live  in  Skowhegan." 

In  a  letter  to  his  mother  in  1863  he  says,  in 
reference  to  his  hospital  services:  "I  have  got  in 
the  way,  after  going  lightly,  as  it  were,  all  through 
the  wards  of  a  hospital,  and  trying  to  give  a  word 
of  cheer,  if  nothing  else,  to  every  one,  then  confin 
ing  my  special  attention  to  the  few  where  the  in 
vestment  seems  to  tell  best,  and  who  want  it  most. 
.  .  .  Mother,  I  have  real  pride  in  telling  you  that  I 
have  the  consciousness  of  saving  quite  a  number  of 
lives  by  keeping  the  men  from  giving  up,  and  being 
a  good  deal  with  them.  The  men  say  it  is  so,  and 
the  doctors  say  it  is  so;  and  I  will  candidly  con 
fess  I  can  see  it  is  true,  though  I  say  it  myself.  I 
know  you  will  like  to  hear  it,  mother,  so  I  tell 
you. " 


36  WHITMAN 

Again  he  says :  "  I  go  among  the  worst  fevers  and 
wounds  with  impunity  ;  I  go  among  the  smallpox, 
etc.,  just  the  same.  I  feel  to  go  without  apprehen 
sion,  and  so  I  go:  nobody  else  goes;  but,  as  the 
darkey  said  there  at  Charleston  when  the  boat  ran 
on  a  flat  and  the  rebel  sharpshooters  were  pepper 
ing  them,  « somebody  must  jump  in  de  water  and 
shove  de  boat  off. '  " 

In  another  letter  to  his  mother  he  thus  accounts 
for  his  effect  upon  the  wounded  soldiers :  "  I  fancy 
the  reason  I  am  able  to  do  some  good  in  the  hospi 
tals  among  the  poor,  languishing,  and  wounded  boys, 
is  that  I  am  so  large  and  well,  —  indeed,  like  a  great 
wild  buffalo  with  much  hair.  Many  of  the  soldiers 
are  from  the  West  and  far  North,  and  they  like  a 
man  that  has  not  the  bleached,  shiny,  and  shaved  cut 
of  the  cities  and  the  East." 

As  to  Whitman's  appearance  about  this  time,  we 
get  an  inkling  from  another  letter  to  his  mother, 
giving  an  account  of  an  interview  he  had  with  Sen 
ator  Preston  King,  to  whom  Whitman  applied  for 
assistance  in  procuring  a  clerkship  in  one  of  the  de 
partments.  King  said  to  him,  "Why,  how  can  I 
do  this  thing,  or  anything  for  you  ?  How  do  I  know 
but  you  are  a  secessionist?  You  look  for  all  the 
world  like  an  old  Southern  planter,  —  a  regular  Caro 
lina  or  Virginia  planter." 

The  great  suffering  of  the  soldiers  and  their  heroic 
fortitude  move  him  deeply.  He  says  to  his  mother: 
"Nothing  of  ordinary  misfortune  seems  as  it  used 
to,  and  death  itself  has  lost  all  its  terrors;  I  have 


BIOGRAPHICAL  AND   PERSONAL  37 

seen  so  many  cases  in  which  it  was  so  welcome  and 
such  a  relief. "  Again :  "  I  go  to  the  hospitals  every 
day  or  night.  I  believe  no  men  ever  loved  each  other 
as  I  and  some  of  these  poor  wounded,  sick,  and  dying 
men  love  each  other." 

Whitman's  services  in  the  hospitals  began  to  tell 
seriously  upon  his  health  in  June,  1864,  when  he  had 
"spells  of  deathly  faintness,  and  had  trouble  in  the 
head."  The  doctors  told  him  he  must  keep  away 
for  a  while,  but  he  could  not.  Under  date  of  June 
7,  1864,  he  writes  to  his  mother  :  — 

"There  is  a  very  horrible  collection  in  Armory 
Building  (in  Armory  Square  Hospital),  —  about  two 
hundred  of  the  worst  cases  you  ever  saw,  and  I  have 
probably  been  too  much  with  them.  It  is  enough  to 
melt  the  heart  of  a  stone.  Over  one  third  of  them 
are  amputation  cases.  Well,  mother,  poor  Oscar  Cun 
ningham  is  gone  at  last:  (he  is  the  82d  Ohio  boy, 
wounded  May  3,  '63).  I  have  written  so  much  of 
him  I  suppose  you  feel  as  if  you  almost  knew  him. 
I  was  with  him  Saturday  forenoon,  and  also  even 
ing.  He  was  more  composed  than  usual;  could  not 
articulate  very  well.  He  died  about  two  o'clock 
Sunday  morning,  very  easy,  they  told  me.  I  was 
not  there.  It  was  a  blessed  relief.  His  life  has 
been  misery  for  months.  I  believe  I  told  you,  last 
letter,  I  was  quite  blue  from  the  deaths  of  several  of 
the  poor  young  men  I  knew  well,  especially  two  of 
whom  I  had  strong  hopes  of  their  getting  up.  Things 
are  going  pretty  badly  with  the  wounded.  They  are 
crowded  here  in  Washington  in  immense  numbers, 


38  WHITMAN 

and  all  those  that  came  up  from  the  Wilderness 
and  that  region  arrived  here  so  neglected  and  in 
such  plight  it  was  awful  (those  that  were  at  Freder- 
icksburg,  and  also  from  Belle  Plain).  The  papers 
are  full  of  puffs,  etc.,  but  the  truth  is  the  largest 
proportion  of  worst  cases  get  little  or  no  attention. 

"  We  receive  them  here  with  their  wounds  full  of 
worms,  —  some  all  swelled  and  inflamed.  Many  of 
the  amputations  have  to  be  done  over  again.  One 
new  feature  is,  that  many  of  the  poor,  afflicted  young 
men  are  crazy;  every  ward  has  some  in  it  that  are 
wandering.  They  have  suffered  too  much,  and  it  is 
perhaps  a  privilege  that  they  are  out  of  their  senses. 
Mother,  it  is  most  too  much  for  a  fellow,  and  I 
sometimes  wish  I  was  out  of  it;  but  I  suppose  it  is 
because  I  have  not  felt  firstrate  myself. " 

Of  the  Ohio  soldier  above  referred  to,  Whitman 
had  written  a  few  days  before:  "You  remember  I 
told  you  of  him  a  year  ago,  when  he  was  first 
brought  in.  I  thought  him  the  noblest  specimen  of 
a  young  Western  man  I  had  seen.  A  real  giant 
in  size,  and  always  with  a  smile  on  his  face.  Oh, 
what  a  change!  He  has  long  been  very  irritable 
to  every  one  but  me,  and  his  frame  is  all  wasted 
away. " 

To  his  brother  Jeff  he  wrote :  "Of  the  many  I 
have  seen  die,  or  known  of  the  past  year,  I  have  not 
seen  or  known  of  one  who  met  death  with  any  ter 
ror.  Yesterday  I  spent  a  good  part  of  the  afternoon 
with  a  young  man  of  seventeen  named  Charles  Cut 
ter,  of  Lawrence  City,  1st  Massachusetts  Heavy  Ar- 


BIOGKAPHICAL  AND  PERSONAL       39 

tillery,  Battery  M.  He  was  brought  into  one  of  the 
hospitals  mortally  wounded  in  abdomen.  Well,  I 
thought  to  myself  as  I  sat  looking  at  him,  it  ought  to 
be  a  relief  to  his  folks,  after  all,  if  they  could  see 
how  little  he  suffered.  He  lay  very  placid,  in  a  half 
lethargy,  with  his  eyes  closed;  it  was  very  warm, 
and  I  sat  a  long  while  fanning  him  and  wiping  the 
sweat.  At  length  he  opened  his  eyes  quite  wide 
and  clear,  and  looked  inquiringly  around.  I  said, 
"  What  is  it,  my  dear  ?  do  you  want  anything  ?  "  He 
said  quietly,  with  a  good-natured  smile,  "Oh,  no 
thing;  I  was  only  looking  around  to  see  who  was 
with  me."  His  mind  was  somewhat  wandering, 
yet  he  lay  so  peaceful  in  his  dying  condition.  He 
seemed  to  be  a  real  New  England  country  boy,  so 
good-natured,  with  a  pleasant,  homely  way,  and 
quite  fine-looking.  Without  any  doubt,  he  died  in 
course  of  the  night." 

Another  extract  from  a  letter  to  his  mother  in 
April,  1864:- 

"  Mother,  you  don't  know  what  a  feeling  a  man 
gets  after  being  in  the  active  sights  and  influences 
of  the  camp,  the  army,  the  wounded,  etc.  He  gets 
to  have  a  deep  feeling  he  never  experienced  before, 
—  the  flag,  the  tune  of  Yankee  Doodle,  and  simi 
lar  things,  produce  an  effect  on  a  fellow  never  felt 
before.  I  have  seen  tears  on  the  men's  cheeks, 
and  others  turn  pale  under  such  circumstances.  I 
have  a  little  flag,  —  it  belonged  to  one  of  our  cav 
alry  regiments,  —  presented  to  me  by  one  of  the 
wounded.  It  was  taken  by  the  rebs  in  a  cavalry 


40  WHITMAN 

fight,  and  rescued  by  our  men  in  a  bloody  little 
skirmish.  It  cost  three  men's  lives  just  to  get 
one  little  flag  four  by  three.  Our  men  rescued  it, 
and  tore  it  from  the  breast  of  a  dead  rebel.  All 
that  just  for  the  name  of  getting  their  little  banner 
back  again.  The  man  that  got  it  was  very  badly 
wounded,  and  they  let  him  keep  it.  I  was  with 
him  a  good  deal.  He  wanted  to  give  me  something, 
he  said;  he  did  not  expect  to  live;  so  he  gave  me 
the  little  banner  as  a  keepsake.  I  mention  this, 
mother,  to  show  you  a  specimen  of  the  feeling. 
There  isn't  a  regiment  of  cavalry  or  infantry  that 
would  n't  do  the  same  on  occasion." 

[An  army  surgeon,  who  at  the  time  watched  with 
curiosity  Mr.  Whitman's  movements  among  the  sol 
diers  in  the  hospitals,  has  since  told  me  that  his 
principles  of  operation,  effective  as  they  were,  seemed 
strangely  few,  simple,  and  on  a  low  key,  — to  act 
upon  the  appetite,  to  cheer  by  a  healthy  and  fitly 
bracing  appearance  and  demeanor;  and  to  fill  and 
satisfy  in  certain  cases  the  affectional  longings  of 
the  patients,  was  about  all.  He  carried  among 
them  no  sentimentalism  nor  moralizing;  spoke  not 
to  any  man  of  his  "sins,"  but  gave  something  good 
to  eat,  a  buoying  word,  or  a  trifling  gift  and  a  look. 
He  appeared  with  ruddy  face,  clean  dress,  with  a 
flower  or  a  green  sprig  in  the  lapel  of  his  coat. 
Crossing,  the  fields  in  summer,  he  would  gather  a 
great  bunch  of  dandelion  blossoms,  and  red  and 
white  clover,  to  bring  and  scatter  on  the  cots,  as 
reminders  of  out-door  air  and  sunshine. 


BIOGRAPHICAL  AND  PERSONAL       41 

When  practicable,  he  came  to  the  long  and 
crowded  wards  of  the  maimed,  the  feeble,  and  the 
dying,  only  after  preparations  as  for  a  festival,  — 
strengthened  by  a  good  meal,  rest,  the  bath,  and 
fresh  underclothes.  He  entered  with  a  huge  hav 
ersack  slung  over  his  shoulder,  full  of  appropriate 
articles,  with  parcels  under  his  arms,  and  protuber 
ant  pockets.  He  would  sometimes  come  in  summer 
with  a  good-sized  basket  filled  with  oranges,  and 
would  go  round  for  hours  paring  and  dividing  them 
among  the  feverish  and  thirsty.] 

Of  his  devotion  to  the  wounded  soldiers  there  are 
many  witnesses.  A  well-known  correspondent  of 
the  "  New  York  Herald  "  writes  thus  about  him  in 
April,  1876:  — 

"I  first  heard  of  him  among  the  sufferers  on 
the  Peninsula  after  a  battle  there.  Subsequently  I 
saw  him,  time  and  again,  in  the  Washington  hos 
pitals,  or  wending  his  way  there,  with  basket  or 
haversack  on  his  arm,  and  the  strength  of  benefi 
cence  suffusing  his  face.  His  devotion  surpassed 
the  devotion  of  woman.  It  would  take  a  volume 
to  tell  of  his  kindness,  tenderness,  and  thoughtful- 
ness. 

"Never  shall  I  forget  one  night  when  I  accom 
panied  him  on  his  rounds  through  a  hospital  filled 
with  those  wounded  young  Americans  whose  hero 
ism  he  has  sung  in  deathless  numbers.  There  were 
three  rows  of  cots,  and  each  cot  bore  its  man. 
When  he  appeared,  in  passing  along,  there  was  a 
smile  of  affection  and  welcome  on  every  face,  how- 


42  WHITMAN 

ever  wan,  and  his  presence  seemed  to  light  up  the 
place  as  it  might  be  lighted  by  the  presence  of  the 
God  of  Love.  From  cot  to  cot  they  called  him, 
often  in  tremulous  tones  or  in  whispers;  they  em 
braced  him;  they  touched  his  hand;  they  gazed  at 
him.  To  one  he  gave  a  few  words  of  cheer;  for  an 
other  he  wrote  a  letter  home;  to  others  he  gave  an 
orange,  a  few  comfits,  a  cigar,  a  pipe  and  tobacco,  a 
sheet  of  paper  or  a  postage-stamp,  all  of  which  and 
many  other  things  were  in  his  capacious  haversack. 
From  another  he  would  receive  a  dying  message  for 
mother,  wife,  or  sweetheart;  for  another  he  would 
promise  to  go  an  errand;  to  another,  some  special 
friend  very  low,  he  would  give  a  manly  farewell  kiss. 
He  did  the  things  for  them  no  nurse  or  doctor 
could  do,  and  he  seemed  to  leave  a  benediction  at 
every  cot  as  he  passed  along.  The  lights  had 
gleamed  for  hours  in  the  hospital  that  night  before 
he  left  it,  and,  as  he  took  his  way  towards  the  door, 
you  could  hear  the  voices  of  many  a  stricken  hero 
calling,  'Walt,  Walt,  Walt!  come  again!  come 
again!'" 

in 

Out  of  that  experience  in  camp  and  hospital  the 
pieces  called  "Drum-Taps,"  first  published  in  1865, 
—  since  merged  in  his  "Leaves,"  —  were  produced. 
Their  descriptions  and  pictures,  therefore,  come  from 
life.  The  vivid  incidents  of  "  The  Dresser  "  are 
but  daguerreotypes  of  the  poet's  own  actual  move 
ments  among  the  bad  cases  of  the  wounded  after  a 


BIOGRAPHICAL  AND   PERSONAL  43 

battle.  The  same  personal  knowledge  runs  through 
"A  Sight  in  Camp  in  the  Daybreak  Gray  and  Dim," 
"  Come  up  from  the  Fields,  Father, "  etc. ,  etc. 

The  reader  of  this  section  of  Whitman's  work 
soon  discovers  that  it  is  not  the  purpose  of  the  poet 
to  portray  battles  and  campaigns,  or  to  celebrate 
special  leaders  or  military  prowess,  but  rather  to 
chant  the  human  aspects  of  anguish  that  follow  in 
the  train  of  war.  j.  He  perhaps  feels  that  the  per 
manent  condition  of  modern  society  is  that  of  peace ; 
that  war  as  a  business,  as  a  means  of  growth,  has 
served  its  time;  and  that,  notwithstanding  the  vast 
difference  between  ancient  and  modern  warfare, 
both  in  the  spirit  and  in  the  means,  Homer's  pic 
tures  are  essentially  true  yet,  and  no  additions  to 
them  can  be  made.  War  can  never  be  to  us  what 
it  has  been  to  the  nations  of  all  ages  down  to  the 
present;  never  the  main  fact,  the  paramount  con 
dition,  tyrannizing  over  all  the  affairs  of  national 
and  individual  life,  but  only  an  episode,  a  passing 
interruption;  and  the  poet,  who  in  our  day  would 
be  as  true  to  his  nation  and  times  as  Homer  was  to 
his,  must  treat  of  it  from  the  standpoint  of  peace 
and  progress,  and  even  benevolence.  Vast  armies 
rise  up  in  a  night  and  disappear  in  a  day;  a  mil 
lion  of  men,  inured  to  battle  and  to  blood,  go  back 
to  the  avocations  of  peace  without  a  moment's  con 
fusion  or  delay,  —  indicating  clearly  the  tendency 
that  prevails. 

Apostrophizing  the  genius  of  America  in  the  su 
preme  hour  of  victory,  he  says :  — 


44  WHITMAN 

"  No  poem  proud,  I,  chanting,  bring  to  thee  — nor  mastery's  rap 
turous  verse: — 

But  a  little  book  containing  night's  darkness  and  blood-dripping 
wounds, 

And  psalms  of  the  dead." 

The  collection  is  also  remarkable  for  the  absence 
of  all  sectional  or  partisan  feeling.  Under  the  head 
of  " Eeconciliation  "  are  these  lines:  — 

"  Word  over  all,  beautiful  as  the  sky  ! 

Beautiful  that  war,  and  all  its  deeds  of  carnage,  must  in  time  be 

utterly  lost ! 
That  the  hands  of  the  sisters  Death  and  Night  incessantly,  softly 

wash  again,  and  ever  again,  this  soil'd  world  ; 
.  .  .  For  my  enemy  is  dead  —  a  man  divine  as  myself  is  dead  ; 
I  look  where  he  lies,  white-faced  and  still,  in  the  coffin  —  I  draw 

near  ; 
I  bend  down,  and  touch  lightly  with  my  lips  the  white  face  in  the 

coffin." 

Perhaps  the  most  noteworthy  of  Whitman's  war 
poems  is  the  one  called  "When  Lilacs  last  in  the 
Door-yard  bloomed, "  written  in  commemoration  of 
President  Lincoln. 

The  main  effect  of  this  poem  is  of  strong,  solemn, 
and  varied  music ;  and  it  involves  in  its  construc 
tion  a  principle  after  which  perhaps  the  great  com 
posers  most  work,  —  namely,  spiritual  auricular 
analogy.  At  first  it  would  seem  to  defy  analysis, 
so  rapt  is  it,  and  so  indirect.  No  reference  what 
ever  is  made  to  the  mere  fact  of  Lincoln's  death; 
the  poet  does  not  even  dwell  upon  its  unprovoked 
atrocity,  and  only  occasionally  is  the  tone  that  of 
lamentation;  but,  with  the  intuitions  of  the  grand 
art,  which  is  the  most  complex  when  it  seems  most 
simple,  he  seizes  upon  three  beautiful  facts  of  na- 


BIOGRAPHICAL  AND   PERSONAL  45 

ture,  which  he  weaves  into  a  wreath  for  the  dead 
President's  tomb.  The  central  thought  is  of  death, 
but  around  this  he  curiously  twines,  first,  the  early  - 
bloomingjilac^  which  the  poet  may  have  plucked 
the  day  the  dark  shadow  came;  next  the__song_of 
the  hermit_thrush,  the  most  sweet  and  solemn  of  all 
our  songsters,  heard  at  twilight  in  the  dusky  cedars; 
and  with  these  the  evening  star,  which,  as  many 
may  remember,  night  after  night  in  the  early  part 
of  that  eventful  spring,  hung  low  in  the  west  with 
unusual  and  tender  brightness.  These  are  the  pre 
mises  whence  he  starts  his  solemn  chant. 

The  attitude,  therefore,  is  not  that  of  being 
bowed  down  and  weeping  hopeless  tears,  but  of 
singing  a  commemorative  hymn,  in  which  the  voices 
and  fits  that  exalted  condition  of 


the  soul  which  serious  events  and  the  presence  of 
death  induce.  There  are  no  words  of  mere  eulogy, 
no  statistics,  and  no  story  oj  narrative;  but  there 
are  pictures,  processions,  and  a  strange  mingling  of 
darkness  and  light,  of  grief  and  triumph:  now  the 
voice  of  the  bird,  or  the  drooping  lustrous  star,  or 
the  sombre  thought  of  death;  then  a  recurrence  to 
the  open  scenery  of  the  land  as  it  lay  in  the  April 
light,  "the  summer  approaching  with  richness  and 
the  fields  all  busy  with  labor,"  presently  dashed  in 
upon  by  a  spectral  vision  of  armies  with  torn  and 
bloody  battle-flags,  and,  again,  of  the  white  skele 
tons  of  young  men  long  afterward  strewing  the 
ground.  Hence  the  piece  has  little  or  nothing  of 
the  character  of  the  usual  productions  on  such  oc- 


46  WHITMAN 

casions.  It  is  dramatic;  yet  there  is  no  develop 
ment  of  plot,  but  a  constant  interplay,  a  turning 
and  returning  of  images  and  sentiments. 

The  poet  breaks  a  sprig  of  lilac  from  the  bush  in 
the  door-yard,  —  the  dark  cloud  falls  on  the  land,  — 
the  long  funeral  sets  out,  — and  then  the  apostro 
phe: — 

"  Coffin  that  passes  through  lanes  and  streets, 

Through  day  and  night,  with  the  great  cloud  darkening  the  land, 

With  the  pomp  of  the  inloop'd  flags,  with  the  cities  draped  in 

black, 
With  the  show  of  the  States  themselves,  as  of  crape-veiled  women, 

standing, 
With  processions  long  and  winding,  and  the  flambeaus  of  the 

night, 
With  the  countless  torches  lit  —  with  the  silent  sea  of  faces,  and 

the  unbared  heads, 

With  the  waiting  depot,  the  arriving  coffin,  and  the  sombre  faces, 
With  dirges  through  the  night,  with  the  thousand  voices  rising 

strong  and  solemn ; 
With  all  the  mournful  voices  of  the  dirges,  pour'd  around  the 

coffin, 
To  dim-lit  churches  and  the  shuddering  organs  —  Where  amid 

these  you  journey, 

With  the  tolling,  tolling  bells'  perpetual  clang ; 
Here !  coffin  that  slowly  passes, 
I  give  you  my  sprig  of  lilac. 

"  (Nor  for  you,  for  one  alone ; 

Blossoms  and  branches  green  to  coffins  all  I  bring; 
For  fresh  as  the  morning  —  thus  would  I  chant  a  song  for  you,  0 
sane  and  sacred  death. 

"  All  over  bouquets  of  roses, 

O  death !  I  cover  you  over  with  roses  and  early  lilies ; 

But  mostly  and  now  the  lilac  that  blooms  the  first, 

Copious,  I  break,  I  break  the  sprigs  from  the  bushes J 

With  loaded  arms  I  come,  pouring  for  you, 

For  you  and  the  coffins  all  of  you,  O  death.)  " 

Then  the  strain  goes  on :  — 


BIOGRAPHICAL  AND   PERSONAL  47 

"  0  how  shall  I  warble  myself  for  the  dead  one  there  I  loved  ? 
And  how  shall  I  deck  my  song  for  the  large  sweet  soul  that  has 

gone  ? 
And  what  shall  my  perfume  be,  for  the  grave  of  him  I  love  ? 

"  Sea-winds,  blown  from  east  and  west, 

Blown  from  the  eastern  sea,  and  blown  from  the  western  sea,  till 

there  on  the  prairies  meeting  : 
These,  and  with  these,  and  the  breath  of  my  chant, 
I  perfume  the  grave  of  him  I  love." 

The  poem  reaches,    perhaps,   its  height    in    the 
matchless  invocation  to  Death :  — 

"Come,  lovely  and  soothing  Death, 

Undulate  round  the  world,  serenely  arriving,  arriving, 

In  the  day,  in  the  night,  to  all,  to  each, 

Sooner  or  later,  delicate  Death. 

"  Prais'd  be  the  fathomless  universe, 
For  life  and  joy,  and  for  objects  and  knowledge  curious; 
And  for  love,  sweet  love  —  but  praise !  O  praise  and  praise, 
For  the  sure-enwindmg  arms  of  cool-enfolding  Death. 

"  Dark  Mother,  always  gliding  near,  with  soft  feet, 
Have  none  chanted  for  thee  a  chant  of  fullest  welcome  ? 
Then  I  chant  it  for  thee  —  I  glorify  thee  above  all ; 
I  bring  thee  a  song  that  when  thou  must  indeed  come,  come  un 
falteringly. 

"  Approach,  encompassing  Death  — strong  Deliveress! 

When  it  is  so  —  when  thou  hast  taken  them,  I  joyously  sing  the 

dead, 

Lost  in  the  loving,  floating  ocean  of  thee, 
Laved  in  the  flood  of  thy  bliss,  0  Death. 

"From  me  to  thee  glad  serenades, 

Dances  for  thee  I  propose,  saluting  thee  —  adornments  and  feast- 
ings  for  thee ; 

And  the  sights  of  the  open  landscape,  and  the  high-spread  sky 
are  fitting, 

And  life  and  the  fields,  and  the  huge  and  thoughtful  night. 

The  night,  in  silence,  under  many  a  star; 

The  ocean  shore,  and  the  husky  whispering  wave,  whose  voice  I 
know; 

And  the  soul  turning  to  thee,  O  vast  and  well-veil'd  Death, 

And  the  body  gratefully  nestling  close  to  thee." 


48  WHITMAN 

IV 

Whitman  despised  riches,  and  all  mere  worldly 
success,  as  heartily  as  ever  did  any  of  the  old  Chris 
tians.  All  outward  show  and  finery  were  intensely 
distasteful  to  him.  He  probably  would  not  have 
accepted  the  finest  house  in  New  York  on  condition 
that  he  live  in  it.  During  his  hospital  experiences 
he  cherished  the  purpose,  as  soon  as  the  war  was 
over,  of  returning  to  Brooklyn,  buying  an  acre  or 
two  of  land  in  some  by-place  on  Long  Island,  and 
building  for  himself  and  his  family  a  cheap  house. 
When  his  brother  Jeff  contemplated  building,  he 
advised  him  to  build  merely  an  Irish  shanty.  After 
what  he  had  seen  the  soldiers  put  up  with,  he 
thought  anything  was  good  enough  for  him  or  his 
people.  In  one  of  his  letters  to  his  mother,  he 
comments  upon  the  un-American  and  inappropriate 
ornamentation  of  the  rooms  in  the  Capitol  building, 
"  without  grandeur  and  without  simplicity,"  he  says. 
In  the  state  the  country  was  in,  and  with  the  hospi 
tal  scenes  before  him,  the  "  poppy-show  goddesses  " 
and  the  Italian  style  of  decoration,  etc.,  sickened 
him,  and  he  got  away  from  it  all  as  quickly  as  he 
could. 

v 

During  the  war  and  after,  I  used  to  see  a  good  deal 
of  Whitman  in  Washington.  Summer  and  winter 
he  was  a  conspicuous  figure  on  Pennsylvania  Ave 
nue,  where  he  was  wont  to  walk  for  exercise  and  to 
feed  his  hunger  for  faces.  One  would  see  him  afar  off, 


BIOGRAPHICAL  AND  PERSONAL       49 

in  the  crowd  but  not  of  it,  —  a  large,  slow-moving 
figure,  clad  in  gray,  with  broad-brimmed  hat  and 
gray  beard,  —  or,  quite  as  frequently,  on  the  front 
platform  of  the  street  horse-cars  with  the  driver. 
My  eye  used  to  single  him  out  many  blocks  away. 

There  were  times  during  this  period  when  his  as 
pect  was  rather  forbidding,  —  the  physical  man  was 
too  pronounced  on  first  glance;  the  other  man  was 
hidden  beneath  the  broad-brimmed  hat.  One  needed 
to  see  the  superbly  domed  head  and  classic  brow 
crowning  the  rank  physical  man. 

In  his  middle  manhood,  judging  from  the  photos, 
he  had  a  hirsute,  kindly  look,  but  very  far  removed 
from  the  finely  cut  traditional  poet's  face. 

VI 

I  have  often  heard  Whitman  say  that  he  inherited 
most  excellent  blood  from  his  mother,  —  the  old 
Dutch  Van  Velser  strain,  —  Long  Island  blood  fil 
tered  and  vitalized  through  generations  by  the  breath 
of  the  sea.  He  was  his  mother's  child  unmistak 
ably.  With  all  his  rank  masculinity,  there  was  a 
curious  feminine  undertone  in  him  which  revealed 
itself  in  the  quality  of  his  voice,  the  delicate  tex 
ture  of  his  skin,  the  gentleness  of  his  touch  and 
ways,  the  attraction  he  had  for  children  and  the 
common  people.  A  lady  in  the  West,  writing  to 
me  about  him,  spoke  of  his  "great  mother-nature." 
He  was  receptive,  sympathetic,  tender,  and  met  you, 
not  in  a  positive,  aggressive  manner,  but  more  or  less 
in  a  passive  or  neutral  mood.  He  did  not  give  his 


50  WHITMAN 

friends  merely  his  mind,  he  gave  them  himself.  It 
is  not  merely  his  mind  or  intellect  that  he  has 
put  into  his  poems,  it  is  himself.  Indeed,  this 
feminine  mood  or  attitude  might  be  dwelt  upon  at 
much  length  in  considering  his  poems,  —  their  sol 
vent,  absorbing  power,  and  the  way  they  yield  them 
selves  to  diverse  interpretations. 

The  sea,  too,  had  laid  its  hand  upon  him,  as  I  have 
already  suggested.  He  never  appeared  so  striking 
and  impressive  as  when  seen  upon  the  beach.  His 
large  and  tall  gray  figure  looked  at  home,  and  was 
at  home,  upon  the  shore.  The  simple,  strong,  flow 
ing  lines  of  his  face,  his  always  clean  fresh  air,  his 
blue  absorbing  eye,  his  commanding  presence,  and 
something  pristine  and  elemental  in  his  whole  ex 
pression,  seemed  at  once  to  put  him  en  rapport  with 
the  sea.  No  phase  of  nature  seems  to  have  im 
pressed  him  so  deeply  as  the  sea,  or  recurs  so  often 
in  his  poems. 

VII 

Whitman  was  preeminently  manly,  —  richly  en 
dowed  with  the  universal,  healthy  human  qualities 
and  attributes.  Mr.  Con  way  relates  that  when 
Emerson  handed  him  the  first  thin  quarto  edition 
of  "Leaves  of  Grass,"  while  he  was  calling  at  his 
house  in  Concord,  soon  after  the  book  appeared,  he 
said,  "Americans  abroad  may  now  come  home:  unto 
us  a  man  is  born." 

President  Lincoln,  standing  one  day  during  the 
war  before  a  window  in  the  White  House,  saw 
Whitman  slowly  saunter  by.  He  followed  him 


BIOGRAPHICAL  AND   PERSONAL  51 

with  his  eyes,   and,  turning,   said    to    those    about 
him,  "Well,  he  looks  like  a  man." 

"Meeter  of  savage  and  gentleman  on  equal  terms." 
During  Whitman's  Western  tour  in  1879  or  '80, 
at  some  point  in  Kansas,  in  company  with  several 
well-known  politicians  and  government  officials,  he 
visited  a  lot  of  Indians  who  were  being  held  as 
prisoners.  The  sheriff  told  the  Indians  who  the 
distinguished  men  were  who  were  about  to  see  them, 
but  the  Indians  paid  little  attention  to  them  as,  one 
after  the  other,  the  officials  and  editors  passed  by 
them.  Behind  all  came  Whitman.  The  old  chief 
looked  at  him  steadily,  then  extended  his  hand  and 
said,  "  How !  "  All  the  other  Indians  followed,  sur 
rounding  Whitman,  shaking  his  hand  and  making 
the  air  melodious  with  their  "Hows."  The  inci 
dent  evidently  pleased  the  old  poet  a  good  deal. 

VIII 

Whitman  was  of  large  mould  in  every  way,  and 
of  bold,  far-reaching  schemes,  and  is  very  sure  to 
fare  better  at  the  hands  of  large  men  than  of  small. 
The  first  and  last  impression  which  his  personal 
presence  always  made  upon  one  was  of  a  nature 
wonderfully  gentle,  tender,  and  benignant.  His 
culture,  his  intellect,  was  completely  suffused  and 
dominated  by  his  humanity,  so  that  the  impression 
you  got  from  him  was  not  that  of  a  learned  or  a 
literary  person,  but  of  fresh,  strong,  sympathetic 
human  nature,  —  such  an  impression,  I  fancy,  only 
fuller,  as  one  might  have  got  from  Walter  Scott. 


52  WHITMAN 

This  was  perhaps  the  secret  of  the  attraction  he  had 
for  the  common,  unlettered  people  and  for  children. 
I  think  that  even  his  literary  friends  often  sought 
his  presence  less  for  conversation  than  to  bask  in  his 
physical  or  psychical  sunshine,  and  to  rest  upon  his 
boundless  charity.  The  great  service  he  rendered 
to  the  wounded  and  homesick  soldiers  in  the  hospi- 
•  tals  during  the  war  came  from  his  copious  endow 
ment  of  this  broad,  sweet,  tender  democratic  nature^ 
He  brought  father  and  mother  to  them,  and  the 
tonic  and  cheering  atmosphere  of  simple,  affectionate 
home  life. 

In  person  Whitman  was  large  and  tall,  above  six 
feet,  with  a  breezy,  open-air  look.  His  tempera 
ment  was  sanguine;  his  voice  was  a  tender  bari 
tone.  The  dominant  impression  he  made  was  that 
of  something  fresh  and  clean.  I  remember  the  first 
time  I  met  him,  which  was  in  Washington,  in  the 
fall  of  1863.  I  was  impressed  by  the  fine  grain 
and  clean,  fresh  quality  of  the  man.  Some  passages 
in  his  poems  had  led  me  to  expect  something  dif 
ferent.  He  always  had  the  look  of  a  man  who 
had  just  taken  a  bath.  The  skin  was  light  and 
clear,  and  the  blood  well  to  the  surface.  His  body, 
as  I  once  noticed  when  we  were  bathing  in  the 
surf,  had  a  peculiar  fresh  bloom  and  fineness  and 
delicacy  of  texture.  His  physiology  was  undoubt 
edly  remarkable,  unique.  The  full  beauty  of  his 
face  and  head  did  not  appear  till  he  was  past  sixty. 
After  that,  I  have  little  doubt,  it  was  the  finest 
head  this  age  or  country  has  seen.  Every  artist 


BIOGRAPHICAL  AND  PERSONAL       53 

who  saw  him  was  instantly  filled  with  .a  keen  desire 
to  sketch  him.  The  lines  were  so  simple,  so  free, 
and  so  strong.  High,  arching  brows;  straight, 
clear-cut  nose;  heavy-lidded  blue-gray  eyes;  fore 
head  not  thrust  out  and  emphasized,  but  a  vital 
part  of  a  symmetrical,  dome-shaped  head;  ear  large, 
and  the  most  delicately  carved  I  have  ever  seen; 
the  mouth  and  chin  hidden  by  a  soft,  long,  white 
beard.  It  seems  to  me  his  face  steadily  refined 
and  strengthened  with  age.  Time  depleted  him 
in  just  the  right  way,  —  softened  his  beard  and 
took  away  the  too  florid  look;  subdued  the  carnal 
man,  and  brought  out  more  fully  the  spiritual 
man.  When  I  last  saw  him  (December  26,  1891), 
though  he  had  been  very  near  death  for  many  days, 
I  am  sure  I  had  never  seen  his  face  so  beautiful. 
There  was  no  breaking-down  of  the  features,  or  the 
least  sign  of  decrepitude,  such  as  we  usually  note 
in  old  men.  The  expression  was  full  of  pathos, 
but  it  was  as  grand  as  that  of  a  god.  I  could  not 
think  of  him  as  near  death,  he  looked  so  uncon- 
quered. 

In  Washington  I  knew  Whitman  intimately  from 
the  fall  of  1863  to  the  time  he  left  in  1873.  In 
Camden  I  visited  him  yearly  after  that  date,  usu 
ally  in  the  late  summer  or  fall.  I  will  give  one 
glimpse  of  him  from  my  diary,  under  date  of 
August  18,  1887.  I  reached  his  house  in  the 
morning,  before  he  was  up.  Presently  he  came 
slowly  down  stairs  and  greeted  me.  "Find  him 
pretty  well,  —  looking  better  than  last  year.  With 


54  WHITMAN 

his  light-gray  suit,  and  white  hair,  and  fresh  pink 
face,  he  made  a  fine  picture.  Among  other  things, 
we  talked  of  the  Swinburne  attack  (then  recently 
published).  W.  did  not  show  the  least  feeling  on 
the  subject,  and,  I  clearly  saw,  was  absolutely  un 
disturbed  by  the  article.  I  told  him  I  had  always 
been  more  disturbed  by  S.  's  admiration  for  him  than 
I  was  now  by  his  condemnation.  By  and  by  W.  had 
his  horse  hitched  up,  and  we  started  for  Glendale, 
ten  miles  distant,  to  see  young  Gilchrist,  the  artist. 
A  fine  drive  through  a  level  farming  and  truck- 
gardening  country;  warm,  but  breezy.  W.  drives 
briskly,  and  salutes  every  person  we  meet,  little 
and  big,  black  and  white,  male  and  female.  Nearly 
all  return  his  salute  cordially.  He  said  he  knew 
but  few  of  those  he  spoke  to,  but  that,  as  he  grew 
older,  the  old  Long  Island  custom  of  his  people, 
to  speak  to  every  one  on  the  road,  was  strong 
upon  him.  One  tipsy  man  in  a  buggy  responded, 
'  Why,  pap,  how  d'  ye  do,  pap  ? '  etc.  We  talked 
of  many  things.  I  recall  this  remark  of  W.,  as 
something  I  had  not  before  thought  of,  that  it  was 
difficult  to  see  what  the  old  feudal  world  would 
have  come  to  without  Christianity:  it  would  have 
been  like  a  body  acted  upon  by  the  centrifugal 
force  without  the  centripetal.  Those  haughty  lords 
and  chieftains  needed  the  force  of  Christianity  to 
check  and  curb  them,  etc.  W.  knew  the  history  of 
many  prominent  houses  on  the  road:  here  a  crazy 
man  lived,  with  two  colored  men  to  look  after  him; 
there,  in  that  fine  house  among  the  trees,  an  old 


BIOGEAPHICAL  AND   PERSONAL  55 

maid,  who  had  spent  a  large  fortune  on  her  house 
and  lands,  and  was  now  destitute,  yet  she  was  a 
woman  of  remarkable  good  sense,  etc.  We  returned 
to  Camden  before  dark,  W.  apparently  not  fatigued 
by  the  drive  of  twenty  miles." 

In  death  what  struck  me  most  about  the  face  was 
its  perfect  symmetry.  It  was  such  a  face,  said 
Mr.  Conway,  as  Rembrandt  would  have  selected 
from  a  million.  "It  is  the  face  of  an  aged  lov 
ing  child.  As  I  looked,  it  was  with  the  reflection 
that,  during  an  acquaintance  of  thirty-six  years,  I 
never  heard  from  those  lips  a  word  of  irritation,  or 
depreciation  of  any  being.  I  do  not  believe  that 
Buddha,  of  whom  he  appeared  an  avatar,  was  more 
gentle  to  all  men,  women,  children,  and  living 
things." 

IX 

For  one  of  the  best  pen-sketches  of  Whitman  in 
his  old  age  we  are  indebted  to  Dr.  J.  Johnston, 
a  young  Scotch  physician  of  Bolton,  England,  who 
visited  Whitman  in  the  summer  of  1890.  I  quote 
from  a  little  pamphlet  which  the  doctor  printed  on 
his  return  home :  — 

"  The  first  thing  about  himself  that  struck  me  was 
the  physical  immensity  and  magnificent  proportions 
of  the  man,  and,  next,  the  picturesque  majesty  of 
his  presence  as  a  whole. 

"  He  sat  quite  erect  in  a  great  cane-runged  chair, 
cross-legged,  and  clad  in  rough  gray  clothes,  with 
slippers  on  his  feet,  and  a  shirt  of  pure  white  linen, 


56  WHITMAN 

with  a  great  wide  collar  edged  with  white  lace, 
the  shirt  buttoned  about  midway  down  his  breast, 
the  big  lapels  of  the  collar  thrown  open,  the  points 
touching  his  shoulders,  and  exposing  the  upper  por 
tion  of  his  hirsute  chest.  He  wore  a  vest  of  gray 
homespun,  but  it  was  unbuttoned  almost  to  the  bot 
tom.  He  had  no  coat  on,  and  his  shirt  sleeves  were 
turned  up  above  the  elbows,  exposing  most  beauti 
fully  shaped  arms,  and  flesh  of  the  most  delicate 
whiteness.  Although  it  was  so  hot,  he  did  not 
perspire  visibly,  while  I  had  to  keep  mopping 
my  face.  His  hands  are  large  and  massive,  but  in 
perfect  proportion  to  the  arms;  the  ringers  long, 
strong,  white,  and  tapering  to  a  blunt  end.  His 
nails  are  square,  showing  about  an  eighth  of  an  inch 
separate  from  the  flesh,  and  I  noticed  that  there 
was  not  a  particle  of  impurity  beneath  any  of  them. 
But  his  majesty  is  concentrated  in  his  head,  which 
is  set  with  leonine  grace  and  dignity  upon  his  broad, 
square  shoulders;  and  it  is  almost  entirely  covered 
with  long,  fine,  straggling  hair,  silvery  and  glisten 
ing,  pure  and  white  as  sunlit  snow,  rather  thin  on 
the  top  of  his  high,  rounded  crown,  streaming  over 
and  around  his  large  but  delicately  -  shaped  ears, 
down  the  back  of  his  big  neck;  and,  from  his 
pinky-white  cheeks  and  top  lip,  over  the  lower  part 
of  his  face,  right  down  to  the  middle  of  his  chest, 
like  a  cataract  of  materialized,  white,  glistening  va 
por,  giving  him  a  most  venerable  and  patriarchal 
appearance.//  His  high,  massive  forehead  is  seamed 
with  wrinkles.  His  nose  is  large,  strong,  broad, 


BIOGRAPHICAL  AND  PERSONAL       57 

and  prominent,  but  beautifully  chiseled  and  pro 
portioned,  almost  straight,  very  slightly  depressed 
at  the  tip,  and  with  deep  furrows  on  each  side, 
running  down  to  the  angles  of  the  mouth.  The 
eyebrows  are  thick  and  shaggy,  with  strong,  white 
hair,  very  highly  arched  and  standing  a  long  way 
above  the  eyes,  which  are  of  a  light  blue  with  a 
tinge  of  gray,  small,  rather  deeply  set,  calm,  clear, 
penetrating,  and  revealing  unfathomable  depths  of 
tenderness,  kindness,  and  sympathy.  The  upper 
eyelids  droop  considerably  over  the  eyeballs.  The 
lips,  which  are  partly  hidden  by  the  thick,  white 
mustache,  are  full.  The  whole  face  impresses  one 
with  a  sense  of  resoluteness,  strength,  and  intellec 
tual  power,  and  yet  withal  a  winning  sweetness,  un 
conquerable  radiance,  and  hopeful  joyousness.  His 
voice  is  highly  pitched  and  musical,  with  a  timbre 
which  is  astonishing  in  an  old  man.  There  is 
none  of  the  tremor,  quaver,  or  shrillness  usually 
observed  in  them,  but  his  utterance  is  clear,  ring 
ing,  and  most  sweetly  musical.  But  it  was  not  in 
any  one  of  these  features  that  his  charm  lay  so 
much  as  in  his  tout  ensemble,  and  the  irresistible 
magnetism  of  his  sweet,  aromatic  presence,  which 
seemed  to  exhale  sanity,  purity,  and  naturalness, 
and  exercised  over  me  an  attraction  which  positively 
astonished  me,  producing  an  exaltation  of  mind  and 
soul  which  no  man's  presence  ever  did  before.  I 
felt  that  I  was  here  face  to  face  with  the  living  em 
bodiment  of  all  that  was  good,  noble,  and  lovable 
in  humanity." 


58  WHITMAN 


British  critics  have  spoken  of  Whitman's  athleti 
cism,  his  athletic  temperament,  etc.,  but  he  was  in 
no  sense  a  muscular  man,  an  athlete.  His  body, 
though  superb,  was  curiously  the  body  of  a  child; 
one  saw  this  in  its  form,  in  its  pink  color,  and  in 
the  delicate  texture  of  the  skin.  He  took  little  in 
terest  in  feats  of  strength,  or  in  athletic  sports.  He 
walked  with  a  slow,  rolling  gait,  indeed,  moved 
slowly  in  all  ways;  he  always  had  an  air  of  infinite 
leisure.  For  several  years,  while  a  clerk  in  the  At 
torney-General's  Office  in  Washington,  his  exercise 
for  an  hour  each  day  consisted  in  tossing  a  few  feet 
into  the  air,  as  he  walked,  a  round,  smooth  stone,  of 
about  one  pound  weight,  and  catching  it  as  it  fell. 
Later  in  life,  and  after  his  first  paralytic  stroke, 
when  in  the  woods,  he  liked  to  bend  down  the 
young  saplings,  and  exercise  his  arms  and  chest  in 
that  way.  In  his  poems  much  emphasis  is  laid 
upon  health,  and  upon  purity  and  sweetness  of  body, 
but  none  upon  mere  brute  strength.  This  is  what 
he  says  "To  a  Pupil:  "  — 

1.  Is  reform  needed  ?     Is  it  through  you  ? 

The  greater  the  reform  needed,  the  greater  the  PERSONALITY 
you  need  to  accomplish  it. 

2.  You!  do  you  not  see  how  it  would  serve  to  have  eyes,  blood, 

complexion,  clean  and  sweet  ? 

Do  you  not  see  how  it  would  serve  to  have  such  a  body  and 
Soul,  that  when  you  enter  the  crowd,  an  atmosphere  of  de 
sire  and  command  enters  with  you,  and  every  one  is  im 
pressed  with  your  personality  ? 


BIOGRAPHICAL  AND  PERSONAL       59 

3.  0  the  magnet !  the  flesh  over  and  over  ! 

Go,  mon  cher  !  if  need  be,  give  up  all  else,  and  commence  to 
day  to  inure  yourself  to  pluck,  reality,  self-esteem,  definite- 
ness,  elevatedness, 

Rest  not,  till  you  rivet  and  publish  yourself  of  your  own  per 
sonality. 

It  is  worthy  of  note  that  Whitman's  Washington 
physician  said  he  had  one  of  the  most  thoroughly 
natural  physical  systems  he  had  ever  known,  —  the 
freest,  probably,  from  extremes  or  any  dispropor 
tion;  which  answers  to  the  perfect  sanity  which  all 
his  friends  must  have  felt  with  regard  to  his  mind. 

A  few  years  ago  a  young  English  artist  stopping 
in  this  country  made  several  studies  of  him.  In 
one  of  them  which  he  showed  me,  he  had  left  the 
face  blank,  but  had  drawn  the  figure  from  the  head 
down  with  much  care.  It  was  so  expressive,  so 
unmistakably  Whitman,  conveyed  so  surely  a  cer 
tain  majesty  and  impressiveness  that  pertained  to 
the  poet  physically,  that  I  looked  upon  it  with  no 
ordinary  interest.  Every  wrinkle  in  the  garments 
seemed  to  proclaim  the  man.  Probably  a  similar 
painting  of  any  of  one's  friends  would  be  more  or 
less  a  recognizable  portrait,  but  I  doubt  if  it  would 
speak  so  emphatically  as  did  this  incomplete  sketch. 
I  thought  it  all  the  more  significant  in  this  case  be 
cause  Whitman  laid  such  stress  upon  the  human 
body  in  his  poems,  built  so  extensively  upon  it, 
curiously  identifying  it  with  the  soul,  and  declaring 
his  belief  that  if  he  made  the  poems  of  his  body  and 
of  mortality  he  would  thus  supply  himself  with  the 
poems  of  the  soul  and  of  immortality.  "Behold," 


60  WHITMAN 

he  says,  'I  the  body  includes  and  is  the  meaning, 
the  main  ^concern,  and  includes  and  is  the  soul; 
whoever  you  are,  how  superb  and  how  divine  is 
your  body,  or  any  part  of  it ! " )  He  runs  this  phy 
siological  thread  all  through  *nis  book,  and  strings 
upon  it  many  valuable  lessons  and  many  noble  sen 
timents.  Those  who  knew  him  well,  I  think,  will 
agree  with  me  that  his  bodily  presence  was  singu 
larly  magnetic,  restful,  and  positive,  and  that  it  fur 
nished  a  curious  and  suggestive  commentary  upon 
much  there  is  in  his  poetry. 

The  Greeks,  who  made  so  much  more  of  the 
human  body  than  we  do,  seem  not  to  have  carried  so 
much  meaning,  so  much  history,  in  their  faces  as 
does  the  modern  man;  the  soul  was  not  concentra 
ted  here,  but  was  more  evenly  distributed  over  the 
whole  body.  Their  faces  expressed  repose,  har 
mony,  power  of  command.  I  think  Whitman  was 
like  the  Greeks  in  this  respect.  His  face  had  none 
of  the  eagerness,  sharpness,  nervousness,  of  the  mod 
ern  face.  It  had  but  few  lines,  and  these  were 
Greek.  From  the  mouth  up,  the  face  was  expres 
sive  of  Greek  purity,  simplicity,  strength,  and  repose. 
The  mouth  was  large  and  loose,  and  expressive  of 
another  side  of  his  nature.  It  was  a  mouth  that 
required  the  check  and  curb  of  that  classic  brow. 

And  the  influence  of  his  poems  is  always  on  the 
side  of  physiological  cleanliness  and  strength,  and 
severance  from  all  that  corrupts  and  makes  morbid 
and  mean.  He  says  the  "expression  of  a  well-made 
man  appears  not  only  in  his  face :  it  is  in  his  limbs 


BIOGKAPHICAL  AND  PERSONAL       61 

and  joints  also;  it  is  curiously  in  the  joints  of  his 
hips  and  wrists;  it  is  in  his  walk,  the  carriage  of 
his  neck,  the  flex  of  his  waist  and  knees;  dress 
does  not  hide  him ;  the  strong,  sweet,  supple  quality 
he  has  strikes  through  the  cotton  and  flannel;  to 
see  him  pass  conveys  as  much  as  the  best  poem, 
perhaps  more.  You  linger  to  see  his  back,  and  the 
back  of  his  neck  and  shoulder-side. "  He  says  he  has 
perceived  that  to  be  with  those  he  likes  is  enough : 
"To  be  surrounded  by  beautiful,  curious,  breathing, 
laughing  flesh  is  enough,  —  I  do  not  ask  any  more 
delight;  I  swim  in  it,  as  in  a  sea.  There  is  some 
thing  in  staying  close  to  men  and  women  and  look 
ing  on  them,  and  in  the  contact  and  odor  of  them, 
that  pleases  the  soul  well.  All  things  please  the 
soul,  but  these  please  the  soul  well. "  Emerson  once 
asked  Whitman  what  it  was  he  found  in  the  soci 
ety  of  the  common  people  that  satisfied  him  so; 
for  his  part,  he  could  not  find  anything.  The  sub 
ordination  by  Whitman  of  the  purely  intellectual  to 
the  human  and  physical,  which  runs  all  through  his 
poems  and  is  one  source  of  their  power,  Emerson, 
who  was  deficient  in  the  sensuous,  probably  could 
npt  appreciate. 

XI 

The  atmosphere  of  Whitman  personally  was  that 
of  a  large,  tolerant,  tender,  sympathetic,  restful  man, 
easy  of  approach,  indifferent  to  any  special  social  or 
other  distinctions  and  accomplishments  that  might 
be  yours,  and  regarding  you  from  the  start  for  your 
self  alone. 


62  WHITMAN 

Children  were  very  fond  of  him;  and  women, 
unless  they  had  been  prejudiced  against  him,  were 
strongly  drawn  toward  him.  His  personal  magnet 
ism  was  very  great,  and  was  warming  and  cheer 
ing.  He  was  rich  in  temperament,  probably  be 
yond  any  other  man  of  his  generation,  —  rich  in  all 
the  purely  human  and  emotional  endowments  and 
basic  qualities.  Then  there  was  a  look  about  him 
hard  to  describe,  and  which  I  have  seen  in  no  other 
face,  —  a  gray,  brooding,  elemental  look,  like  the 
granite  rock,  something  primitive  and  Adamic  that 
might  have  belonged  to  the  first  man;  or  was  it  a 
suggestion  of  the  gray,  eternal  sea  that  he  so  loved, 
near  which  he  was  born,  and  that  had  surely  set  its 
seal  upon  him?  I  know  not,  but  I  feel  the  man 
with  that  look  is  not  of  the  day  merely,  but  of  the 
centuries.  His  eye  was  not  piercing,  but  absorb 
ing,  —  "draining  "  is  the  word  happily  used  by  Wil 
liam  O'Connor;  the  soul  back  of  it  drew  things  to 
himself,  and  entered  and  possessed  them  through 
sympathy  and  personal  force  and  magnetism,  rather 
than  through  mere  intellectual  force. 

_  xii 

Walt  Whitman  was  of  the  people,  the  common 
people,  and  always  gave  out  their  quality  and  at 
mosphere.  His  commonness,  his  nearness,  as  of 
the  things  you  have  always  known,  —  the  day,  the 
sky,  the  soil,  your  own  parents,  — were  in  no  way 
veiled,  or  kept  in  abeyance,  by  his  culture  or  poetic 
gifts.  He  was  redolent  of  the  human  and  the  fa- 


BIOGRAPHICAL  AND  PERSONAL       63 

miliar.  Though  capable,  on  occasions,  of  great  pride 
and  hauteur,  yet  his  habitual  mood  and  presence 
was  that  of  simple,  average,  healthful  humanity,  — 
the  virtue  and  flavor  of  sailors,  soldiers,  laborers, 
travelers,  or  people  who  live  with  real  things  in  the 
open  air.  His  commonness  rose  into  the  uncom 
mon,  the  extraordinary,  but  without  any  hint  of  the 
exclusive  or  specially  favored.  He  was  indeed  "no 
sentimentalist,  no  stander  above  men  and  women  or 
apart  from  them." 

The  spirit  that  animates  every  page  of  his  book, 
and  that  it  always  effuses,  is  the  spirit  of  common, 
universal  humanity,  —  humanity  apart  from  creeds, 
schools,  conventions,  from  all  special  privileges  and 
refinements,  as  it  is  in  and  of  itself  in  its  relations 
to  the  whole  system  of  things,  in  contradistinction 
to  the  literature  of  culture  which  effuses  the  spirit 
of  the  select  and  exclusive. 

His  life  was  the  same.  Walt  Whitman  never 
stood  apart  from  or  above  any  human  being.  The 
common  people  —  workingmen,  the  poor,  the  illit 
erate,  the  outcast  —  saw  themselves  in  him,  and 
he  saw  himself  in  them :  the  attraction  was  mutual. 
He  was  always  content  with  common,  unadorned 
humanity.  Specially  intellectual  people  rather 
repelled  him;  the  wit,  the  scholar,  the  poet,  must 
have  a  rich  endowment  of  the  common,  universal, 
human  attributes  and  qualities  to  pass  current  with 
him.  He  sought  the  society  of  boatmen,  railroad 
men,  farmers,  mechanics,  printers,  teamsters,  mo 
thers  of  families,  etc. ,  rather  than  the  society  of  pro- 


64  WHITMAN 

fessional  men  or  scholars.  Men  who  had  the  qual 
ity  of  things  in  the  open  air  —  the  virtue  of  rocks, 
trees,  hills  —  drew  him  most ;  and  it  is  these  qualities 
and  virtues  that  he  has  aimed  above  all  others  to 
put  into  his  poetry,  and  to  put  them  there  in  such 
a  way  that  he  who  reads  must  feel  and  imbibe  them. 

The  recognized  poets  put  into  their  pages  the  vir 
tue  and  quality  of  the  fine  gentleman,  or  of  the  sen 
sitive,  artistic  nature :  this  poet  of  democracy  effuses 
the  atmosphere  of  fresh,  strong  Adamic  man,  —  man 
acted  upon  at  first  hand  by  the  shows  and  forces  of 
universal  nature. 

If  our  poet  ever  sounds  the  note  of  the  crude,  the 
loud,  the  exaggerated,  he  is  false  to  himself  and  to 
his  high  aims.  I  think  he  may  be  charged  with 
having  done  so  a  few  times,  in  his  earlier  work,  but 
not  in  his  later.  In  the  1860  edition  of  his  poems 
stands  this  portraiture,  which  may  stand  for  himself, 
with  one  or  two  features  rather  overdrawn :  — 

"  His  shape  arises 

Arrogant,  masculine,  naive,  rowdyish, 

Laugher,  weeper,  worker,  idler,  citizen,  countryman, 

Saunterer  of  woods,  stander  upon  hills,   summer  swimmer  in 

rivers  or  by  the  sea, 
Of  pure  American  breed,  of  reckless  health,  his   body  perfect, 

free  from  taint  from  top  to  toe,  free  forever  from  headache 

and  dyspepsia,  clean-breathed, 
Ample-limbed,  a  good  feeder,   weight  a  hundred  and  eighty 

pounds,  full-blooded,  six  feet  high,  forty  inches  round  the 

breast  and  back, 

Countenance  sunburnt,  bearded,  calm,  unrefined, 
Reminder  of  animals,  meeter  of  savage  and  gentleman  on  equal 

terms, 
Attitudes  lithe  and  erect,  costume  free,  neck  gray  and  open,  of 

slow  movement  on  foot, 


BIOGRAPHICAL  AND  PERSONAL       65 

Passer  of  his  right  arm  round  the  shoulders  of  his  friends,  com 
panion  of  the  street, 

Persuader  always  of  people  to  give  him  their  sweetest  touches, 
and  never  their  meanest. 

A  Manhattanese  bred,  fond  of  Brooklyn,  fond  of  Broadway,  fond 
of  the  life  of  the  wharves  and  the  great  ferries, 

Enterer  everywhere,  welcomed  everywhere,  easily  understood 
after  all, 

Never  offering  others,  always  offering  himself,  corroborating 
his  phrenology, 

Voluptuous,  inhabitive,  combative,  conscientious,  alimentive, 
intuitive,  of  copious  friendship,  sublimity,  firmness,  self- 
esteem,  comparison,  individuality,  form,  locality,  eventu 
ality, 

Avowing  by  life,  manners,  words  to  contribute  illustrations  of 
results  of  These  States, 

Teacher  of  the  unquenchable  creed  namely  egotism, 

Inviter  of  others  continually  henceforth  to  try  their  strength 
against  his." 

XIII 

Whitman  was  determined,  at  whatever  risk  to  his 
own  reputation,  to  make  the  character  which  he 
has  exploited  in  his  poems  a  faithful  compend  of 
American  humanity,  and  to  do  this  the  rowdy  ele 
ment  could  not  be  entirely  ignored.  Hence  he  un 
flinchingly  imputes  it  to  himself,  as,  for  that  mat 
ter,  he  has  nearly  every  sin  and  dereliction  mankind 
are  guilty  of. 

Whitman  developed  slowly  and  late  upon  the  side 
that  related  him  to  social  custom  and  usage,  —  to 
the  many  fictions,  concealments,  make-believes,  and 
subterfuges  of  the  world  of  parlors  and  drawing- 
rooms.  He  never  was  an  adept  in  what  is  called 
' '  good  form  ;  "  the  natural  man  that  he  was  shows 
crude  in  certain  relations.  His  publication  of  Emer 
son's  letter  with  its  magnificent  eulogium  of  "Leaves 


66  WHITMAN 

of  Grass  "  has  been  much  commented  upon.  There 
may  be  two  opinions  as  to  the  propriety  of  his 
course  in  this  respect :  a  letter  from  a  stranger  upon 
a  matter  of  public  interest  is  not  usually  looked 
upon  as  a  private  letter.  Emerson  never  spoke  with 
more  felicity  and  penetration  than  he  does  in  this 
letter;  but  it  is  for  Whitman's  own  sake  that  we 
would  have  had  him  practice  self-denial  in  the 
matter ;  he  greatly  plumed  himself  upon  Emerson's 
endorsement,  and  was  guilty  of  the  very  bad  taste  of 
printing  a  sentence  from  the  letter  upon  the  cover  of 
the  next  edition  of  his  book.  Grant  that  it  showed 
a  certain  crudeness,  unripeness,  in  one  side  of  the 
man;  later  in  life,  he  could  not  have  erred  in  this 
way.  Buskin  is  reported  saying  that  he  never  in 
his  life  wrote  a  letter  to  any  human  being  that  he 
would  not  be  willing  should  be  posted  up  in  the 
market-place,  or  cried  by  the  public  crier  through 
the  town.  But  Emerson  was  a  much  more  timid 
and  conforming  man  than  Ruskin,  and  was  much 
more  likely  to  be  shocked  by  such  a  circumstance. 

It  has  been  said  that  the  publication  of  this 
letter  much  annoyed  Emerson,  and  that  he  never 
forgave  Whitman  the  offense.  That  he  was  dis 
turbed  by  it  and  by  the  storm  that  arose  there 
can  be  little  doubt;  but  there  is  no  evidence  that 
he  allowed  the  fact  to  interfere  with  his  friend 
ship  for  the  poet.  Charles  W.  Eldridge,  who  per 
sonally  knew  of  the  relations  of  the  two  men, 
says  :  — 

"  There  was  not  a  year  from  1855  (the  date  of  the 


BIOGRAPHICAL  AND  PERSONAL       67 

Emerson  letter  and  its  publication)  down  to  1860 
(the  year  Walt  came  to  Boston  to  supervise  the 
issue  of  the  Thayer  &  Eldridge  edition  of  *  Leaves 
of  Grass '),  that  Emerson  did  not  personally  seek 
out  Walt  at  his  Brooklyn  home,  usually  that  they 
might  have  a  long  symposium  together  at  the  Astor 
House  in  New  York.  Besides  that,  during  these 
years  Emerson  sent  many  of  his  closest  friends,  in 
cluding  Alcott  and  Thoreau,  to  see  Walt,  giving 
them  letters  of  introduction  to  him.  This  is  not 
the  treatment  usually  accorded  a  man  who  has  com 
mitted  an  unpardonable  offense. 

"I  know  that  afterwards,  during  Walt's  stay  in 
Boston,  Emerson  frequently  came  down  from  Con 
cord  to  see  him,  and  that  they  had  many  walks 
and  talks  together,  these  conferences  usually  ending 
with  a  dinner  at  the  American  House,  at  that  time 
Emerson's  favorite  Boston  hotel.  On  several  occa 
sions  they  met  by  appointment  in  our  counting- 
room.  Their  relations  were  as  cordial  and  friendly 
as  possible,  and  it  was  always  Emerson  who  sought 
out  Walt,  and  never  the  other  way,  although,  of 
course,  Walt  appreciated  and  enjoyed  Emerson's 
companionship  very  much.  In  truth,  Walt  never 
sought  the  company  of  notables  at  all,  and  was  al 
ways  very  shy  of  purely  literary  society.  I  know 
that  at  this  time  Walt  was  invited  by  Emerson  to 
Concord,  but  declined  to  go,  probably  through  his 
fear  that  he  would  see  too  much  of  the  literary 
coterie  that  then  clustered  there,  chiefly  around 
Emerson. " 


68  WHITMAN 

XIV 

A  Whitman  gave  himself  to  men  as  men  and  not  as 
scholars  or  poets,  and  gave  himself  purely  as  a  man. 
While  not  specially  averse  to  meeting  people  on 
literary  or  intellectual  grounds,  yet  it  was  more  to 
his  taste  to  meet  on  the  broadest,  commonest,  human 
grounds.  What  you  had  seen  or  felt  or  suffered  or 
done  was  of  much  more  interest  to  him  than  what 
you  had  read  or  thought;  your  speculation  about 
the  soul  interested  him  less  than  the  last  person  you 
had  met,  or  the  last  chore  you  had  done. 

Any  glimpse  of  the  farm,  the  shop,  the  house 
hold —  any  bit  of  real  life,  anything  that  carried 
the  flavor  and  quality  of  concrete  reality  —  was  very 
welcome  to  him;  herein,  no  doubt,  showing  the 
healthy,  objective,  artist  mind.  He  never  tired  of 
hearing  me  talk  about  the  birds  or  wild  animals,  or 
my  experiences  in  camp  in  the  woods,  the  kind  of 
characters  I  had  met  there,  and  the  flavor  of  the  life 
of  remote  settlements  in  Maine  or  Canada.  His 
inward,  subjective  life  was  ample  of  itself;  he  was 
familiar  with  all  your  thoughts  and  speculations  be 
forehand:  what  he  craved  was  wider  experience,  — 
to  see  what  you  had  seen,  and  feel  what  you  had 
felt.  He  was  fond  of  talking  with  returned  travel 
ers  and  explorers,  and  with  sailors,  soldiers,  me 
chanics;  much  of  his  vast  stores  of  information 
upon  all  manner  of  subjects  was  acquired  at  first 
hand,  in  the  old  way,  from  the  persons  who  had 
seen  or  done  or  been  what  they  described  or  related. 


BIOGRAPHICAL  AND  PERSONAL       69 

He  had  almost  a  passion  for  simple,  unlettered 
humanity,  — an  attraction  which  specially  intellec 
tual  persons  will  hardly  understand.  (Schooling  and 
culture  are  so  often  purchased  at  such  an  expense 
to  the  innate,  fundamental  human  qualities ! )  Igno 
rance,  with  sound  instincts  and  the  quality  which 
converse  with  real  things  imparts  to  men,  was  more 
acceptable  to  him  than  so  much  of  our  sophistica 
ted  knowledge,  or  our  studied  wit,  or  our  artificial 
poetry. 

xv 

At  the  time  of  Whitman's  death,  one  of  our 
leading  literary  journals  charged  him  with  having 
brought  on  premature  decay  by  leading  a  riotous 
and  debauched  life.  I  hardly  need  say  that  there 
was  no  truth  in  the  charge.  The  tremendous  emo 
tional  strain  of  writing  his  "Leaves,"  followed  by 
his  years  of  service  in  the  army  hospitals,  where 
he  contracted  blood-poison,  resulted  at  the  age  of 
fifty-four  in  the  rupture  of  a  small  blood-vessel  in 
the  brain,  which  brought  on  partial  paralysis.  A 
sunstroke  during  his  earlier  manhood  also  played  its 
part  in  the  final  break-down. 

That,  tried  by  the  standard  of  the  lives  of  our 
New  England  poets,  Whitman's  life  was  a  blameless 
one,  I  do  not  assert ;  but  that  it  was  a  sane,  temper 
ate,  manly  one,  free  from  excesses,  free  from  the  per 
versions  and  morbidities  of  a  mammonish,  pampered, 
over-stimulated  age,  I  do  believe.  Indeed,  I  may 
say  I  know.  The  one  impression  he  never  failed 
to  make  —  physically,  morally,  intellectually  —  on 


70 


WHITMAN 


young  and  old,  women  and  men,  was  that  of  health, 
sanity,  sweetness.  This  is  the  impression  he  seems 
to  have  made  upon  Mr.  Howells,  when  lie  met  the 
poet  at  PfafFs  early  in  the  sixties. 

The  critic  I  have  alluded  to  inferred  license  in 
the  man  from  liberty  in  the  poet.  He  did  not  have 
the  gumption  to  see  that  Whitman  made  the  ex 
perience  of  all  men  his  own,  and  that  his  scheme  in 
cluded  the  evil  as  well  as  the  good;  that  especially 
did  he  exploit  the  unloosed,  all-loving,  all-accepting 
natural  man,  —  the  man  who  is  done  with  conven 
tions,  illusions  and  all  morbid  pietisms,  and  who  gives 
himself  lavishly  to  all  that  begets  and  sustains  life. 
Yet  not  the  natural  or  carnal  man  for  his  own  sake, 
but  for  the  sake  of  the  spiritual  meanings  and  values 
to  which  he  is  the  key.  Indeed,  Whitman  is  about 
the  most  uncompromising  spiritualist  in  literature; 
with  him,  all  things  exist  by  and  for  the  soul.  He 
felt  the  tie  of  universal  brotherhood,  also,  as  few 
have  felt  it.  It  was  not  a  theory  with  him,  but 
a  fact  that  shaped  his  life  and  colored  his  poems. 
"Whoever  degrades  another  degrades  me,"  and  the 
thought  fired  his  imagination. 

XVI 

The  student  of  Whitman's  life  and  works  will 
be  early  struck  by  three  things,  —  his  sudden  burst 
into  song,  the  maturity  of  his  work  from  the  first, 
and  his  self-knowledge  and  self-estimate.  The  fit 
of  inspiration  came  upon  him  suddenly  •  it  was  like 
the  flowering  of  the  orchards  in  spring;  there  was 


BIOGRAPHICAL  AND  PERSONAL       71 

little  or  no  hint  of  it  till  almost  the  very  hour  of 
the  event.  Up  to  the  time  of  the  appearance  of 
the  first  edition  of  "Leaves  of  Grass,"  he  had  pro 
duced  nothing  above  mediocrity.  A  hack  writer  on 
newspapers  and  magazines,  then  a  carpenter  and 
house-builder  in  a  small  way,  then  that  astounding 
revelation  "Leaves  of  Grass,"  the  very  audacity  of 
it  a  gospel  in  itself.  How  dare  he  do  it  ?  how  could 
he  do  it,  and  not  betray  hesitation  or  self -conscious 
ness?  It  is  one  of  the  exceptional  events  in  lit 
erary  history.  The  main  body  of  his  work  was 
produced  in  five  or  six  years,  or  between  1854  and 
1859.  Of  course  it  was  a  sudden  flowering,  which, 
consciously  or  unconsciously,  must  have  been  long 
preparing  in  his  mind.  His  work  must  have  had 
a  long  foreground,  as  Emerson  suggested.  Dr. 
Bucke,  his  biographer,  thinks  it  was  a  special  inspi 
ration,  —  something  analogous  to  Paul's  conversion, 
a  sudden  opening  of  what  the  doctor  calls  "cosmic 
consciousness. " 

Another  student  and  lover  of  Whitman  says:  "It 
is  certain  that  some  time  about  his  thirty- fifth  year 
[probably  a  little  earlier]  there  came  over  him  a 
decided  change:  he  seemed  immensely  to  broaden 
and  deepen;  he  became  less  interested  in  what  are 
usually  regarded  as  the  more  practical  affairs  of  life. 
He  lost  what  little  ambition  he  ever  had  for  money- 
making,  and  permitted  good  business  opportunities 
to  pass  unheeded.  He  ceased  to  write  the  some 
what  interesting  but  altogether  commonplace  and 
respectable  stories  and  verses  which  he  had  been  in 


72  WHITMAN 

the  habit  of  contributing  to  periodicals.  He  would 
take  long  trips  into  the  country,  no  one  knew 
where,  and  would  spend  more  time  in  his  favorite 
haunts  about  the  city,  or  on  the  ferries,  or  the  tops 
of  omnibuses,  at  the  theatre  and  opera,  in  picture 
galleries,  and  wherever  he  could  observe  men  and 
women  and  art  and  nature." 

Then  the  maturity  of  his  work  from  the  first 
line  of  it !  It  seems  as  if  he  came  into  the  full  pos 
session  of  himself  and  of  his  material  at  one  bound, 
—  never  had  to  grope  for  his  way  and  experiment, 
as  most  men  do.  What  apprenticeship  he  served,  or 
with  whom  he  served  it,  we  get  no  hint.  He  has 
come  to  his  own,  and  is  in  easy,  joyful  possession  of 
it,  when  he  first  comes  into  view.  He  outlines  his 
scheme  in  his  first  poem,  "Starting  from  Pau- 
manok, "  and  he  has  kept  the  letter  and  the  spirit 
of  every  promise  therein  made.  We  never  see  him 
doubtful  or  hesitating;  we  never  see  him  battling 
for  his  territory,  and  uncertain  whether  or  not  he  is 
upon  his  own  ground.  He  has  an  air  of  content 
ment,  of  mastery  and  .triumph,  from  the  start. 

His  extraordinary  self-estimate  and  self-awareness 
are  equally  noticeable.  We  should  probably  have 
to  go  back  to  sacred  history  to  find  a  parallel  case. 
The  manner  of  man  he  was,  his  composite  character, 
his  relation  to  his  country  and  times,  his  unlikeness 
to  other  poets,  his  affinity  to  the  common  people, 
how  he  would  puzzle  and  elude  his  critics,  how  his 
words  would  itch  at  our  ears  till  we  understood  them, 
etc. ,  —  how  did  he  know  all  this  from  the  first  ? 


HIS  KULING  IDEAS  AND  AIMS 


T  ET  me  here  summarize  some  of  the  ideas  and 
-*-^  principles  in  which  "  Leaves  of  Grass  "  has  its 
root,  and  from  which  it  starts.  A  collection  of 
poems  in  the  usual  sense,  a  variety  of  themes  artis 
tically  treated  and  appealing  to  our  aesthetic  percep 
tibilities  alone,  it  is  not.  It  has,  strictly  speaking, 
but  one  theme,  —  personality,  the  personality  of  the 
poet  himself.  To  exploit  this  is  always  the  main 
purpose,  and,  in  doing  so,  to  make  the  book  both 
directly  and  indirectly  a  large,  impassioned  utter 
ance  upon  all  the  main  problems  of  life  and  of  na 
tionality.  It  is  primitive,  like  the  early  literature 
of  a  race  or  people,  in  that  its  spirit  and  purpose  are 
essentially  religious.  It  is  like  the  primitive  litera 
tures  also  in  its  prophetic  cry  and  in  its  bardic  sim 
plicity  and  homeliness,  and  unlike  them  in  its  faith 
and  joy  and  its  unconquerable  optimism. 

It  has  been  not  inaptly  called  the  bible  of  demo 
cracy.  Its  biblical  features  are  obvious  enough  with 
the  darker  negative  traits  left  out.  It  is  Israel  with 
science  and  the  modern  added. 

Whitman  was  swayed  by  a  few  great  passions,  — 
the  passion  for  country,  the  passion  for  comrades, 
the  cosmic  passion,  etc.  His  first  concern  seems 


74  WHITMAN 

always  to  have  been  for  his  country.  He  has 
touched  no  theme,  named  no  man,  not  related  in 
some  way  to  America.  The  thought  of  it  possessed 
him  as  thoroughly  as  the  thought  of  Israel  pos 
sessed  the  old  Hebrew  prophets.  Indeed,  it  is  the 
same  passion,  and  flames  up  with  the  same  vitality 
and  power,  —  the  same  passion  for  race  and  nativity 
enlightened  by  science  and  suffused  with  the  modern 
humanitarian  spirit.  Israel  was  exclusive  and  cruel. 
Democracy,  as  exemplified  in  Walt  Whitman,  is 
compassionate  and  all-inclusive:  — 

/  "  My  spirit  has  passed  in  compassion  and  determination  around 

the  whole  earth, 
I  have  looked  for  equals  and  lovers,  and  found  them  ready  for 

me  in  all  lands  ; 
I  think  some  divine  rapport  has  equalized  me  with  them. 

"  0  vapors  !    I  think  I  have  risen  with  you,  and  moved  away 

to  distant  continents,  and  fallen  down  there,  for  reasons, 
I  think  I  have  blown  with  you,  0  winds, 
O  waters,  I  have  fingered  every  shore  with  you." 

" 

The  work  springs  from  the  modern  democratic 
conception  of  society,  —  of  absolute  social  equality. 

It  embodies  the  modern  scientific  conception  of 
the  universe,  as  distinguished  from  the  old  theologi 
cal  conception,  —  namely,  that  creation  is  good  and 
sound  in  all  its  parts. 

It  embodies  a  conception  of  evil  as  a  part  of  the 
good,  of  death  as  the  friend  and  not  the  enemy  of 
life. 

It  places  comradeship,   manly  attachment,  above 


HIS  EULING  IDEAS  AND  AIMS  77 

Another  of  the  ideas  that  master^Vhitman  and  rule  .5 
him  is  the  idea  of  identity,  —  that  you  are  you  and 
I  am  I,  and  that  we  are  henceforth  secure  whatever 
conies  or  goes.  He  revels  in  this  idea;  it  is  fruitful 
with  him ;  it  begets  in  him  the  ego- enthusiasm,  and 
is  at  the  bottom  of  his  unshakable  faith  in  immor 
tality.  It  leavens  all  his  work.  It  cannot  be  too 
often  said  that  the  book  is  not  merely  a  collection 
of  pretty  poems,  themes  elaborated  and  followed  out 
at  long  removes  from  the  personality  of  the  poet, 
but  a  series  of  sorties  into  the  world  of  materials, 
the  American  world,  piercing  through  the  ostensible 
shows  of  things  to  the  interior  meanings,  and  illus 
trating  in  a  free  and  large  way  the  genesis  and 
growth  of  a  man,  his  free  use  of  the  world  about 
him,  appropriating  it  to  himself,  seeking  his  spirit 
ual  identity  through  its  various  objects  and  experi 
ences,  and  giving  in  many  direct  and  indirect  ways 
the  meaning  and  satisfaction  of  life.  There  is  much 
in  it  that  is  not  poetical  in  the  popular  sense,  much 
that  is  neutral  and  negative,  and  yet  is  an  integral 
part  of  the  whole,  as  is  the  case  in  the  world  we 
inhabit.  If  it  offends,  it  is  in  a  wholesome  way, 
like  objects  in  the  open  air. 

' 

Whitman    rarely    celebrates    exceptional    charac 
ters.      He  loves  the  common  humanity,  and   finds  J 
his  ideals  among  the  masses.      It  is  not  difficult  to 
reconcile    his   attraction   toward   the   average   man, 
towards   workingmen    and    "powerful,  uneducated 


78  WHITMAN 

persons,"  with  the  ideal  of  a  high  excellence,  be 
cause  he  finally  rests  only  upon  the  most  elevated 
and  heroic  personal  qualities,  —  elevated  but  well 
grounded  in  the  common  and  universal. 

The  types  upon  which  he  dwells  the  most  fondly 
are  of  the  common  people. 

"  I  knew  a  man, 

He  was  a  common  farmer  —  he  was  the  father  of  five  sons, 
And  in  them  were  the  fathers  of  sons  —  and  in  them  were  the 
fathers  of  sons. 

"  This  man  was  of  wonderful  vigor,  calmness,  beauty  of  person, 
The  shape  of  his  head,  the  richness  and  breadth  of  his  manners, 

the  pale  yellow  and  white  of  his  hair  and  beard,  and  the 

immeasurable  meaning  of  his  black  eyes, 
These  I  used  to  go  and  visit  him  to  see  —  he  was  wise  also, 
He  was  six  feet  tall,  he  was  over  eighty  years  old  —  his  sons 

were  massive,  clean,  bearded,  tan-faced,  handsome, 
They  and  his  daughters  loved  him  —  all  who  saw  him  loved  him, 
They  did  not  love  him  by  allowance  —they  loved  him  with  per 
sonal  love; 
He  drank  water  only — the  blood  showed  like  scarlet  through 

the  clear-brown  skin  of  his  face, 
He  was  a  frequent  gunner  and  fisher  —  he  sailed  his  boat  himself 

—  he  had  a  fine  one  presented  to  him  by  a  ship-joiner  —  he 

had  fowling-pieces  presented  to  him  by  men  that  loved 

him; 
When  he  went  with  his  five  sons  and  many  grandsons  to  hunt  or 

fish,  you  would  pick  him  out  as  the  most  beautiful  and 

vigorous  of  the  gang, 
You  would  wish  long  and  long  to  be  with  him  — you  would  wish 

to  sit  by  him  in  the  boat,  that  you  and  he  might  touch  each 

other." 

All  the  motifs  of  his  work  are  the  near,  the  vital,  the 
universal ;  nothing  curious,  or  subtle,  or  far-fetched. 
His  working  ideas  are  democracy,  equality,  person 
ality,  nativity,  health,  sexuality,  comradeship,  self  - 
esteem,  the  purity  of  the  body,  the  equality^  of 


HIS   RULING  IDEAS   AND   AIMS  79 

the  sexes,  etc.  Out  of  them  his  work  radiates. 
They  are  the  eyes  with  which  it  sees,  the  ears 
with  which  it  hears,  the  feet  upon  which  it  goes. 
The  poems  are  less  like  a  statement,  an  argument, 
an  elucidation,  and  more  like  a  look,  a  gesture,  a 
tone  of  voice. 

"  The  word  I  myself  put  primarily  for  the  descrip 
tion  of  them  as  they  stand  at  last,"  says  the  author, 
"  is  the  word  Suggestiveness." 

t^  "Leaves  of  Grass"  requires  a  large  perspective; 
you  must  not  get  your  face  too  near  the  book. 
You  must  bring  to  it  a  magnanimity  of  spirit,  — a 
charity  and  faith  equal  to  its  own.  _JL_oqked  at  too 
closely,  it  often  seems  incoherent  and  meaningless; 
draw  off  a  little  and  let  the  figure  come  out.  The 
book  is  from  first  to  last  a  most  determined  attempt, 
on  the  part  of  a  large,  reflective,  loving,  magnetic, 
rather  primitive,  thoroughly  imaginative  personality, 
to  descend  upon  the  materialism  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  and  especially  upon  a  new  democratic  na 
tion  now  in  full  career  upon  this  continent,  with 
such  poetic  fervor  and  enthusiasm  as  to  lift  and 
fill  it  with  the  deepest  meanings  of  the  spirit  and 
disclose  the  order  of  universal  nature.  The  poet 
has  taken  shelter  behind  no  precedent,  or  criticism, 
or  partiality  whatever,  but  has  squarely  and  lov 
ingly  faced  the  oceanic  amplitude  and  movement  of 
the  life  of  his  times  and  land,  and  fused  them  in 
his  fervid  humanity,  and  imbued  them  with  deepest 
poetic  meanings.  One  of  the  most  striking  features 
of  the  book  is  the  adequacy  and  composure,  even 


80  WHITMAN 

joyousness  and  elation,  of  the  poet  in  the  presence 
of  the  huge  materialism  and  prosaic  conditions  of 
our  democratic  era.  '  He  spreads  himself  over  it  all, 
he  accepts  and  absorbs  it  all,  he  rejects  no  part; 
and  his  quality,  his  individuality,  shines  through 
it  all,  as  the  sun  through  vapors.  The  least  line, 
or  fragment  of  a  line,  is  redolent  of  Walt  Whit 
man.  It  is  never  so  much  the  theme  treated  as  it  is 
the  man  exploited  and  illustrated.  Walt  Wliitman 
does  not  write  poems,  strictly  speaking,  —  does  not 
take  a  bit  of  nature  or  life  or  character  and  chisel 
and  carve  it  into  a  beautiful  image  or  object,  or 
polish  and  elaborate  a  thought,  embodying  it  in 
pleasing  tropes  and  pictures.  I  His  purpose  is  rather 
show  a  towering,  loving,  composite  personality 
moving  amid  all  sorts  of  materials,  taking  them  up 
but  for  a  moment,  disclosing  new  meanings  and 
suggestions  in  them,  passing  on,  bestowing  himself 
upon  whoever  or  whatever  will  accept  him,  tossing 
hints  and  clues  right  and  left,  provoking  and  stimu 
lating  the  thought  and  imagination  of  his  reader, 
but  finishing  nothing  for  him,  leaving  much  to  be 
desired,  much  to  be  completed  by  him  in  his  turn. 

IV 

The  reader  who  would  get  at  the  spirit  and  mean 
ing  of  "  Leaves  of  Grass  "  must  remember  that  its 
animating  principle,  from  first  to  last,  is  Democracy, 
—  that  it  is  a  work  conceived  and  carried  forward  in 
the  spirit  of  the  genius  of  humanity  that  is  now  in 
full  career  in  the  New  World,  —  and  that  all  things 


HIS  RULING  IDEAS  AND  AIMS  81 

characteristically  American  (trades,  tools,  occupa 
tions,  productions,  characters,  scenes)  therefore  have 
their  places  in  it.  It  is  intended  to  be  a  complete 
mirror  of  the  times  in  which  the  life  of  the  poet  fell, 
and  to  show  one  master  personality  accepting,  absorb 
ing  all  and  rising  superior  to  it,  —  namely,  the  poet 
himself.  Yet  it  is  never  Whitman  that  speaks  so 
much  as  it  is  Democracy  that  speaks  through  him. 
He  personifies  the  spirit  of  universal  brotherhood, 
and  in  this  character  launches  forth  his  "omnivo 
rous  words."  What  would  seem  colossal  egotism, 
shameless  confessions,  or  unworthy  affiliations  with 
low,  rude  persons,  what  would  seem  confounding 
good  and  bad,  virtue  and  vice,  etc. ,  in  Whitman  the 
man,  the  citizen,  but  serves  to  illustrate  the  bound 
less  compassion  and  saving  power  of  Whitman  as  the 
spokesman  of  ideal  Democracy.  With  this  clue  in 
mind,  many  difficult  things  are  made  plain  and  easy 
in  the  works  of  this  much  misunderstood  poet. 

Perhaps  the  single  poem  that  throws  most  light 
upon  his  aims  and  methods,  and  the  demand  he 
makes  upon  his  reader,  is  in  "Calamus,"  and  is  as 
follows :  — 

"Whoever  you  are  holding  me  now  in  hand, 
Without  one  thing  all  will  be  useless, 
I  give  you  fair  warning  before  you  attempt  me  further, 
I  am  not  what  you  suppos'd,  but  far  different. 

"  Who  is  he  that  would  become  my  follower  ? 

Who  would  sign  himself  a  candidate  for  my  affections  ? 

u  The  way  is  suspicious,  the  result  uncertain,  perhaps  destructive, 
You  would  have  to  give  up  all  else,  I  alone  would  expect  to  be 
your  sole  and  exclusive  standard, 


82  WHITMAN 

Your  novitiate  would  even  then  be  long  and  exhausting, 

The  whole  past  theory  of  your  life  and  all  conformity  to  the  lives 

around  you  would  have  to  be  abandon'd, 
Therefore  release  me  now  before  troubling  yourself  any  further, 

let  go  your  hand  from  my  shoulders, 
Put  me  down  and  depart  on  your  way. 

"  Or  else  by  stealth  in  some  wood  for  trial, 

Or  back  of  a  rock  in  the  open  air, 

(For  in  any  roof'd  room  of  a  house  I  emerge  not,  nor  in  com 
pany, 

And  in  libraries  I  lie  as  one  dumb,  a  gawk,  or  unborn,  or  dead,) 

But  just  possibly  with  you  on  a  high  hill,  first  watching  lest  any 
person  for  miles  around  approach  unawares, 

Or  possibly  with  you  sailing  at  sea,  or  on  the  beach  of  the  sea  or 
some  quiet  island, 

Here  to  put  your  lips  upon  mine  I  permit  you, 

With  the  comrade's  long-dwelling  kiss  or  the  new  husband's  kiss, 

For  I  am  the  new  husband  and  I  am  the  comrade. 

"Or,  if  you  will,  thrusting  me  beneath  your  clothing, 
Where  I  may  feel  the  throbs  of  your  heart  or  rest  upon  your  hip, 
Carry  me  when  you  go  forth  over  land  or  sea  ; 
For  thus  merely  touching  you  is  enough,  is  best, 
And  thus  touching  you  would  I  silentty  sleep  and  be  carried 
eternally. 

"  But  these  leaves  conning  you  con  at  peril, 
For  these  leaves  and  me  you  will  not  understand, 
They  will  elude  you  at  first  and  still  more  afterward,  I  will  cer 
tainly  elude  you, 
Even  while  you  should  think  you  had  unquestionably  caught  me, 

behold  ! 
Already  you  see  I  have  escaped  from  you. 

"  For  it  is  not  for  what  I  have  put  into  it  that  I  have  written  this 

book, 

Nor  is  it  by  reading  it  you  will  acquire  it, 
Nor  do  those  know  me  best  who  admire  me    and  vauntingly 

praise  me, 
Nor  will  the  candidates  for  my  love  (unless  at  most  a  very  few) 

prove  victorious, 
Nor  will  my  poems  do  good  only,  they  will  do  just  as  much  evil, 

perhaps  more, 


HIS  RULING  IDEAS   AND  AIMS  83 

For  all  is  useless  without  that  for  which  you  may  guess  at  many 

times  and  not  hit,  that  which  I  hinted  at, 
Therefore  release  me  and  depart  on  your  way." 

When  one  has  fully  mastered  this  poem  he  has 
got  a  pretty  good  hold  upon  Whitman's  spirit  and 
method.  His  open-air  standards,  the  baffling  and 
elusive  character  of  his  work,  the  extraordinary  de 
mand  it  makes,  its  radical  and  far-reaching  effects 
upon  life,  its  direct  cognizance  of  evil  as  a  necessary 
part  of  the  good  (there  was  a  human  need  of  sin, 
said  Margaret  Fuller)  its  unbookish  spirit  and  affili 
ations,  its  indirect  and  suggestive  method,  that  it 
can  be  fully  read  only  through  our  acquaintance 
with  life  and  real  things  at  first  hand,  etc. ,  —  all 
this  and  more  is  -in  the  poem. 


HIS   SELF-RELIANCE 

T~T  is  over  sixty  years  since  Goethe  said  that  to 
-*-  be  a  German  author  was  to  be  a  German  martyr. 
I  presume  things  have  changed  in  Germany  since 
those  times,  and  that  the  Goethe  of  to-day  does  not 
encounter  the  jealousy  and  hatred  the  great  poet 
and  critic  of  Weimar  seemed  to  have  called  forth. 
In  Walt  Whitman  we  in  America  have  known  an 
American  author  who  was  an  American  martyr  in 
a  more  literal  sense  than  any  of  the  men  named 
by  the  great  German.  More  than  Heine,  or  Rous 
seau,  or  Moliere,  or  Byron,  was  Whitman  a  victim  of 
the  literary  Philistinism  of  his  country  and  times; 
but,  fortunately  for  himself,  his  was  a  nature  so 
large,  tolerant,  and  self-sufficing  that  his  martyrdom 
sat  very  lightly  upon  him.  His  unpopularity  was 
rather  a  tonic  to  him  than  otherwise.  It  was  of  a 
kind  that  tries  a  man's  mettle,  and  brings  out  his 
heroic  traits  if  he  has  any.  One  almost  envies  him 
his  unpopularity.  It  was  of  the  kind  that  only 
the  greatest  ones  have  experienced,  and  that  attests 
something  extraordinary  in  the  recipient  of  it.  He 
said  he  was  more  resolute  because  all  had  denied 
him  than  he  ever  could  have  been  had  all  accepted, 
and  he  added :  — 

"  I  heed  not  and  have  never  heeded  either  cautions,  majorities, 
nor  ridicule." 


86  WHITMAN 

There  are  no  more  precious  and  tonic  pages  in 
history  than  the  records  of  men  who  have  faced  un 
popularity,  odium,  hatred,  ridicule,  detraction,  in 
obedience  to  an  inward  voice,  and  never  lost  courage 
or  good-nature.  Whitman's  is  the  most  striking 
case  in  our  literary  annals,  —  probably  the  most 
striking  one  in  our  century  outside  of  politics  and 
religion.  The  inward  voice  alone  was  the  oracle  he 
obeyed:  "My  commission  obeying,  to  question  it 
never  daring." 

The  bitter-sweet  cup  of  unpopularity  he  drained 
to  its  dregs,  and  drained  it  cheerfully,  as  one  know 
ing  beforehand  that  it  is  preparing  for  him  and  can 
not  be  avoided. 

"  Have  you  learn'd  lessons  only  of  those  who  admired  you  and 
were  tender  with  you  ?  and  stood  aside  for  you  ? 

Have  you  not  learn'd  great  lessons  from  those  who  reject  you, 
and  brace  themselves  against  you  ?  or  who  treat  you  with 
contempt,  or  dispute  the  passage  with  you  ?  " 

Every  man  is  a  partaker  in  the  triumph  of  him 
who  is  always  true  to  himself  and  makes  no  compro 
mises  with  customs,  schools,  or  opinions.  Whit 
man's  life,  underneath  its  easy  tolerance  and  cheer 
ful  good-will,  was  heroic.  He  fought  his  battle 
against  great  odds  and  he  conquered;  he  had  his 
own  way,  he  yielded  not  a  hair  to  the  enemy. 

The  pressure  brought  to  bear  upon  him  by  the 
press,  by  many  of  his  friends,  and  by  such  a  man  as 
Emerson,  whom  he  deeply  reverenced,  to  change  or 
omit  certain  passages  from  his  poems,  seems  only  to 
have  served  as  the  opposing  hammer  that  clinched 
the  nail.  The  louder  the  outcry  the  more  deeply 


HIS  SELF-RELIANCE  87 

he  felt  it  his  duty  to  stand  by  his  first  convictions. 
The  fierce  and  scornful  opposition  to  his  sex  poems, 
and  to  his  methods  and  aims  generally,  was  proba- 
bly  more-  confirmatory  than  any  approval  could  have 
been.  It  went  to  the  quick.  During  a  dark  period 
of  his  life,  when  no  publisher  would  touch  his  book 
and  when  its  exclusion  from  the  mails  was  threat 
ened,  and  poverty  and  paralysis  were  upon  him,  a 
wealthy  Philadelphian  offered  to  furnish  means  for 
its  publication  if  he  would  omit  certain  poems;  but 
the  poet  does  not  seem  to  have  been  tempted  for 
one  moment  by  the  offer.  He  cheerfully  chose  the 
heroic  part,  as  he  always  did. 

Emerson  reasoned  and  remonstrated  with  him  for 
hours,  walking  up  and  down  Boston  Common,  and 
after  he  had  finished  his  argument,  says  Whitman, 
which  was  unanswerable,  "  I  felt  down  in  my  soul 
the  clear  and  unmistakable  conviction  to  disobey 
all,  and  pursue  my  own  way."  He  told  Emerson 
so,  whereupon  they  went  and  dined  together.  The 
independence  of  the  poet  probably  impressed  Emer 
son  more  than  his  yielding  would  have  done,  for 
had  not  he  preached  the  adamantine  doctrine  of  self- 
trust?  "To  believe  your  own  thought,"  he  says, 
"  to  believe  that  what  is  true  for  you  in  your  private 
heart  is  true  of  all  men,  —  that  is  genius. " 

In  many  ways  was  Whitman,  quite  unconsciously 
to  himself,  the  man  Emerson  invoked  and  prayed 
for,  —  the  absolutely  self-reliant  man ;  the  man  who 
should  find  his  own  day  and  land  sufficient;  who 
had  no  desire  to  be  Greek,  or  Italian,  or  French, 


88  WHITMAN 

or  English,  but  only  himself;  who  should  not 
whine,  or  apologize,  or  go  abroad;  who  should  not 
duck,  or  deprecate,  or  borrow;  and  who  could  see 
through  the  many  disguises  and  debasements  of  our 
times  the  lineaments  of  the  same  gods  that  so  rav 
ished  the  bards  of  old. 

The  moment  a  man  "acts  for  himself,"  says 
Emerson,  "tossing  the  laws,  the  books,  idolatries, 
and  customs  out  of  the  window,  we  pity  him  no 
more,  but  thank  and  revere  him." 

Whitman  took  the  philosopher  at  his  word. 
"Greatness  once  and  forever  has  done  with  opin 
ion,"  even  the  opinion  of  the  good  Emerson. 
"Heroism  works  in  contradiction  to  the  voice  of 
mankind,  and  in  contradiction,  for  a  time,  to  the 
voice  of  the  great  and  good."  "Every  heroic  act 
measures  itself  by  its  contempt  of  some  external 
good,"  —  popularity,  for  instance.  "The  character 
istic  of  heroism  is  persistency."  "When  you  have 
chosen  your  part  abide  by  it,  and  do  not  weakly  try 
to  reconcile  yourself  with  the  world."  "Adhere 
to  your  act,  and  congratulate  yourself  if  you  have 
done  something  strange  and  extravagant,  and  broken 
the  monotony  of  a  decorous  age."  Heroism  "is  the 
avowal  of  the  unschooled  man  that  he  finds  a  qual 
ity  in  him  that  is  negligent  of  expense,  of  health, 
of  life,  of  danger,  of  hatred,  of  reproach,  and  knows 
that  his  will  is  higher  and  more  excellent  than  all 
actual  and  all  possible  antagonists."  "A  man  is 
to  carry  himself  in  the  presence  of  all  opposition  as 
if  everything  were  titular  and  ephemeral  but  he." 


HIS   SELF-RELIANCE  89 

"  Great  works  of  art, "  he  again  says,  "  teach  us  to 
abide  by  our  spontaneous  impression  with  good- 
natured  inflexibility,  the  more  when  the  whole  cry 
of  voices  is  on  the  other  side." 

These  brave  sayings  of  Emerson  were  all  illus 
trated  and  confirmed  by  Whitman's  course.  The 
spectacle  of  this  man  sitting  there  by  the  window 
of  his  little  house  in  Camden,  poor  and  partially 
paralyzed,  and  looking  out  upon  the  trite  and  com 
monplace  scenes  and  people,  or  looking  athwart  the 
years  and  seeing  only  detraction  and  denial,  yet 
always  serene,  cheerful,  charitable,  his  wisdom  and 
tolerance  ripening  and  mellowing  with  time,  is 
something  to  treasure  and  profit  by.  He  was  a 
man  who  needed  no  assurances.  He  had  the  pa 
tience  and  the  leisure  of  nature.  He  welcomed 
your  friendly  and  sympathetic  word,  or  with  equal 
composure  he  did  without  it. 

I  remember  calling  upon  him  shortly  after  Swin 
burne's  fierce  onslaught  upon  him  had  been  pub 
lished,  some  time  in  the  latter  part  of  the  eighties. 
I  was  curious  to  see  how  Whitman  took  it,  but  I 
could  not  discover  either  in  word  or  look  that  he 
was  disturbed  a  particle  by  it.  He  spoke  as  kindly 
of  Swinburne  as  ever.  If  he  was  pained  at  all,  it 
was  on  Swinburne's  account  and  not  on  his  own. 
It  was  a  sad  spectacle  to  see  a  man  retreat  upon 
himself  as  Swinburne  had  done.  In  fact  I  think 
hostile  criticism,  fiercely  hostile,  gave  Whitman 
nearly  as  much  comfort  as  any  other.  Did  it  not 
attest  reality  ?  Men  do  not  brace  themselves  against 


90  WHITMAN 

shadows.  Swinburne's  polysyllabic  rage  showed  the 
force  of  the  current  he  was  trying  to  stem.  As  for 
Swinburne's  hydrocephalic  muse,  I  do  not  think 
Whitman  took  any  interest  in  it  from  the  first. 

Self-reliance,  or  self-trust,  is  one  of  the  princi 
ples  Whitman  announces  in  his  "Laws  for  Crea 
tions."  He  saw  that  no  first-class  work  is  possible 
except  it  issue  from  a  man's  deepest,  most  radical 
self. 

"  What  do  you  suppose  creation  is  ? 

What  do  you  suppose  will  satisfy  the  soul  but  to  walk  free  and 

own  no  superior  ? 
What  do  you  suppose  I  would  intimate  to  you  in  a  hundred  ways, 

but  that  man  or  woman  is  as  good  as  God  ? 
And  that  there  is  no  God  any  more  divine  than  yourself  ? 
And  that  that  is  what  the  oldest  and  newest  myths  finally  mean  ? 
And  that  you  or  any  one  must  approach  creations  through  such 

laws  ?  " 

I  think  it  probable  that  Whitman  anticipated  a 
long  period  of  comparative  oblivion  for  himself  and 
his  works.  He  knew  from  the  first  that  the  public 
would  not  be  with  him;  he  knew  that  the  censors 
of  taste,  the  critics  and  literary  professors,  would 
not  be  with  him;  he  knew  that  the  vast  army  of 
Philistia,  the  respectable,  fashionable  mammon- 
worshiping  crowd,  would  not  be  with  him,  —  that 
the  timid,  the  pampered,  the  prurient,  the  conform 
ing,  the  bourgeoisie  spirit,  the  class  spirit,  the  aca 
demic  spirit,  the  Pharisaic  spirit  in  all  its  forms, 
would  all  work  against  him;  and  that,  as  in  the 
case  of  nearly  all  original,  first-class  men,  he  would 
have  to  wait  to  be  understood  for  the  growth  of  the 
taste  of  himself.  None  knew  more  clearly  than  he 


HIS   SELF-RELIANCE  91 

did  how  completely  our  people  were  under  the  illu 
sion  of  the  genteel  and  the  conventional,  and  that, 
even  among  the  emancipated  few,  the  possession  of 
anything  like  robust  assthetic  perception  was  rare 
enough.  America,  so  bold  and  original  and  indepen 
dent  in  the  world  of  practical  politics  and  material 
endeavor,  is,  in  spiritual  and  imaginative  regions, 
timid,  conforming,  imitative.  There  is,  perhaps, 
no  civilized  country  in  the  world  wherein  the  native, 
original  man,  the  real  critter,  as  Whitman  loved 
to  say,  that  underlies  all  our  culture  and  conven 
tions,  crops  out  so  little  in  manners,  in  literature, 
and  in  social  usages.  S  The  fear  of  being  unconven 
tional  is  greater  with  us  than  the  fear  of  deathA  A 
certain  evasiveness,  polish,  distrust  of  ourselves, 
amounting  to  insipidity  and  insincerity,  is  spoken 
of  by  observant  foreigners.  In  other  words,  we  are 
perhaps  the  least  like  children  of  any  people  in  the 
world.  All  these  things  were  against  Whitman, 
and  will  continue  to  be  against  him  for  a  long  time. 
With  the  first  stroke  he  broke  through  the  conven 
tional  and  took  his  stand  upon  the  natural.  "  With 
rude  hands  he  tore  away  the  veils  and  concealments 
from  the  body  and  from  the  soul.  He  ignored 
entirely  all  social  and  conventional  usages  and  hypo 
crisies,  not  by  revolt  against  them,  but  by  choosing 
a  point  of  view  from  which  they  disappeared.  He 
embraced  the  unrefined  and  the  savage  as  well  as 
the  tender  and  human.  The  illusions  of  the  past, 
the  models  and  standards,  he  freed  himself  of  at 
once,  and  declared  for  the  beauty  and  the  divinity 


92  WHITMAN 

of  the  now  and  the  here.  The  rude  realism  of  his 
"  Leaves  "  shocked  like  a  plunge  in  the  surf,  hut  it 
invigorated  also,  if  we  were  strong  enough  to  stand  it. 

Out  of  Whitman's  absolute  self -trust  arose  his 
prophetic  egotism,  —  the  divine  fervor  and  audacity 
of  the  simple  ego.  He  shared  the  conviction  of  the 
old  prophets  that  man  is  a  part  of  God,  and  that 
there  is  nothing  in  the  universe  any  more  divine 
than  the  individual  soul.  "I,  too,"  he  says,  and 
this  line  is  the  key  to  much  there  is  in  his  work  — 
"I,  too,  have  felt  the  resistless  call  of  myself." 

With  the  old  Biblical  writers  the  motions  of  their 
own  spirits,  their  thoughts,  dreams,  etc.,  was  the 
voice  of  God.  There  is  something  of  the  same  sort 
in  Whitman.  The  voice  of  that  inner  self  was  final 
and  authoritative  with  him.  It  was  the  voice  of 
God.  He  could  drive  through  and  over  all  the 
conventions  of  the  world  in  obedience  to  that  voice. 
This  call  to  him  was  as  a  voice  from  Sinai.  One 
of  his  mastering  thoughts  was  the  thought  of  iden 
tity,  —  that  you  are  you,  and  I  am  I.  This  was 
the  final  meaning  of  things,  and  the  meaning  of 
immortality.  "Yourself,  yourself,  YOURSELF,"  he 
says,  with  swelling  vehemence,  "forever  and  ever." 
To  be  compacted  and  riveted  and  fortified  in  your 
self,  so  as  to  be  a  law  unto  yourself,  is  the  final 
word  of  the  past  and  of  the  present. 

ii 

The  shadow  of  Whitman's  self-reliance  and  heroic 
self-esteem  —  the  sort  of  eddy  or  back-water  —  was 


HIS   SELF-KELIANCE  93 

undoubtedly  a  childlike  fondness  for  praise  and  for 
seeing  his  name  in  print.  In  his  relaxed  moments, 
when  the  stress  of  his  task  was  not  upon  him,  he 
was  indeed  in  many  respects  a  child.  He  had  a 
child's  delight  in  his  own  picture.  He  enjoyed 
hearing  himself  lauded  as  Colonel  Ingersoll  lauded 
him  in  his  lecture  in  Philadelphia,  and  as  his 
friends  lauded  him  at  his  birthday  dinner  parties 
during  the  last  two  or  three  years  of  his  life ;  he 
loved  to  see  his  name  in  print,  and  items  about  him 
self  in  the  newspapers;  he  sometimes  wrote  them 
himself  and  gave  them  to  the  reporters.  And  yet 
nothing  is  surer  than  that  he  shaped  his  life  and 
did  his  work  absolutely  indifferent  to  either  praise 
or  blame;  in  fact,  that  he  deliberately  did  that 
which  he  knew  would  bring  him  dispraise.  The 
candor  and  openness  of  the  man's  nature  would  not 
allow  him  to  conceal  or  feign  anything.  If  he 
loved  praise,  why  should  he  not  be  frank  about  it  ? 
Did  he  not  lay  claim  to  the  vices  and  vanities  of 
men  also?  At  its  worst,  Whitman's  vanity  was  but 
the  foible  of  a  great  nature,  and  should  count  for 
but  little  in  the  final  estimate.  The  common  human 
nature  to  which  he  lay  claim  will  assert  itself;  it 
is  not  always  to  be  kept  up  to  the  heroic  pitch. 

in 

It  was  difficult  to  appreciate  his  liking  for  the 
newspaper.  But  he  had  been  a  newspaper  man 
himself;  the  printer's  ink  had  struck  in;  he  had 
many  associations  with  the  press-room  and  the  com- 


94  WHITMAN 

posing-room ;  he  loved  the  common,  democratic 
character  of  the  newspaper;  it  was  the  average 
man's  library.  The  homely  uses  to  which  it  was 
put,  and  the  humble  firesides  to  which  it  found  its 
way,  endeared  it  to  him,  and  made  him  love  to  see 
his  name  in  it. 

Whitman's  vanity  was  of  the  innocent,  good- 
natured  kind.  He  was  as  tolerant  of  your  criticism 
as  of  your  praise.  Selfishness,  in  any  unworthy 
sense,  he  had  none.  Offensive  arrogance  and  self- 
assertion,  in  his  life  there  was  none. 

His  egotism  is  of  the  large  generous  species  that 
never  irritates  or  pricks  into  you  like  that  of  the 
merely  conceited  man.  His  love,  his  candor,  his 
sympathy  are  on  an  equal  scale. 

His  egotism  comes  finally  to  affect  one  like  the 
independence  and  indifference  of  natural  law.  It 
takes  little  heed  of  our  opinion,  whether  it  be  for  or 
against,  and  keeps  to  its  own  way  whatever  befall. 

Whitman's  absolute  faith  in  himself  was  a  part 
of  his  faith  in  creation.  He  felt  himself  so  keenly 
a  part  of  the  whole  that  he  shared  its  soundness 
and  excellence;  he  must  be  good  as  it  is  good. 

IV 

Whitman  showed  just  enough  intention,  or  pre 
meditation  in  his  life,  dress,  manners,  attitudes  in 
his  pictures,  self-portrayals  in  his  poems,  etc. ,  to  give 
rise  to  the  charge  that  he  was  &  poseur.  He  was  a 
poseur  in  the  sense,  and  to  the  extent,  that  any 
man  is  a  poseur  who  tries  to  live  up  to  a  certain 


HIS   SELF-KELIANCE  95 

ideal  and -to  realize  it  in  his  outward  daily  life.  It 
is  clear  that  he  early  formed  the  habit  of  self-contem 
plation  and  of  standing  apart  and  looking  upon  him 
self  as  another  person.  Hence  his  extraordinary 
self-knowledge,  and,  we  may  also  say,  his  extraordi 
nary  self-appreciation,  or  to  use  his  own  words,  "  the 
quite  changed  attitude  of  the  ego,  the  one  chanting 
or  talking,  towards  himself. "  Of  course  there  is  dan 
ger  in  this  attitude,  but  Whitman  was  large  enough 
and  strong  enough  to  escape  it.  He  saw  himself 
to  be  the  typical  inevitable  democrat  that  others 
have  seen  him  to  be,  and  with  perfect  candor  and 
without  ever  forcing  the  note,  he  portrays  himself  as 
such.  As  his  work  is  confessedly  the  poem  of  him 
self,  himself  magnified  and  projected,  as  it  were, 
upon  the  canvas  of  a  great  age  and  country,  all  his 
traits  and  qualities  stand  out  in  heroic  proportions, 
his  pride  and  egotism  as  well  as  his  love  and  toler 
ance. 

"How  beautiful  is  candor,"  he  says.  "All  faults 
may  be  forgiven  of  him  who  has  perfect  candor. " 
The  last  thing  that  could  ever  be  charged  of  Whit 
man  is  that  he  lacked  openness,  or  was  guilty  of 
any  deceit  or  concealments  in  his  life  or  works. 

From  the  studies,  notes,  and  scrap-books  which 
Whitman  left,  it  appears  that  he  was  long  preparing 
and  disciplining  himself  for  the  work  he  had  in  view. 
"The  long  foreground,"  to  which  Emerson  referred 
in  his  letter,  was  of  course  a  reality.  But  this  self- 
sonsciousness  and  self -adjustment  to  a  given  end  is 
an  element  of  strength  and  not  of  weakness. 


96  WHITMAN 

In  the  famous  vestless  and  coatless  portrait  of 
himself  prefixed  to  the  first  "  Leaves  of  Grass  "  he 
assumes  an  attitude  and  is  in  a  sense  a  poseur ; 
but  the  reader  comes  finally  to  wonder  at  the  mar 
velous  self-knowledge  the  picture  displays,  and  how 
strictly  typical  it  is  of  the  poet's  mental  and  spirit 
ual  attitude  towards  the  world,  —  independent,  un 
conventional,  audacious,  yet  inquiring  and  sympa 
thetic  in  a  wonderful  degree.  In  the  same  way  he 
posed  in  other  portraits.  A  favorite  with  him  is 
the  one  in  which  he  sits  contemplating  a  butterfly 
upon  his  forefinger  —  typical  of  a  man  "  preoccupied 
of  his  own  soul. "  In  another  he  peers  out  curiously 
as  from  behind  a  mask.  In  an  earlier  one  he  stands, 
hat  in  hand,  in  marked  neglige  costume,  —  a  little 
too  intentional,  one  feels.  The  contempt  of  the  pol 
ished  ones  is  probably  very  strong  within  him  at  this 
time.  I  say  contempt,  though  I  doubt  if  Whitman 
ever  felt  contempt  for  any  human  being. 


Then  Whitman  had  a  curious  habit  of  standing 
apart,  as  it  were,  and  looking  upon  himself  and  his 
career  as  of  some  other  person.  He  was  interested 
in  his  own  cause,  and  took  a  hand  in  the  discussion. 
From  first  to  last  he  had  the  habit  of  regarding 
himself  objectively.  On  his  deathbed  he  seemed 
to  be  a  spectator  of  his  own  last  moments,  and  was 
seen  to  feel  his  pulse  a  few  minutes  before  he 
breathed  his  last. 

He  has  recorded  this  trait  in  his  poems :  — 


HIS   SELF-RELIANCE  97 

"  Apart  from  the  pulling  and  hauling  stands  what  I  am, 
Stands  amused,  complacent,  compassionate,  idle,  waiting, 
Looking  with  side-curved  head  curious  what  will  come  next, 
Both  in  and  out  of  the  game  and  watching  and  wondering  at  it." 

As  also  in  this  from  "  Calamus :  "  — 

"  That  shadow  my  likeness  that  goes  to  and  fro  seeking  a  liveli 
hood,  chattering,  chaffering, 

How  often  I  find  myself  standing  and  looking  at  it  where  it  flits, 
How  often  I  question  and  doubt  whether  that  is  really  me  ; 
But  among  my  lovers,  and  caroling  these  songs, 
Oh,  I  never  doubt  whether  that  is  really  me." 

Whitman  always  speaks  as  one  having  authority 
and  not  as  a  scribe,  not  as  a  mere  man  of  letters. 
This  is  the  privilege  of  the  divine  egoism  of  the 
prophet. 

Like  the  utterances  of  the  biblical  writers,  with 
out  argument,  without  elaboration,  his  mere  dictum 
seems  the  word  of  fate.  It  is  not  the  voice  of  a 
man  who  has  made  his  way  through  the  world  by 
rejecting  and  denying,  but  by  accepting  all  and  ris 
ing  superior.  What  the  "  push  of  reading  "  or  the 
push  of  argument  could  not  start  is  often  started 
and  clinched  by  his  mere  authoritative  "I  say." 

"  I  say  where  liberty  draws  not  the  blood  out  of  slavery,  there 

slavey  draws  the  blood  out  of  liberty,"  .  .  . 
"  I  say  the  human  shape  or  face  is  so  great  it  must  never  be  made 

ridiculous  ; 

I  say  for  ornaments  nothing  outre"  can  be  allowed, 
And  that  anything  is  most  beautiful  without  ornament, 
And  that  exaggerations  will  be  sternly  revenged  in  your  own 
physiology  and  in  other  persons'  physiologies  also. 

"  Think  of  the  past  ; 

I  warn  you  that  in  a  little  while  others  will  find  their  past  in  you 

and  your  times.  .  .  . 
Think  of  spiritual  results. 


98  WHITMAN 

Sure  as  the  earth  swims  through  the  heavens,  does  every  one  of 

its  objects  pass  into  spiritual  results. 
Think  of  manhood,  and  you  to  be  a  man  ; 
Do  you  count  manhood,  and  the  sweet  of  manhood,  nothing  ? 
Think  of  womanhood  and  you  to  be  a  woman  ; 
The  Creation  is  womanhood  ; 
Have  I  not  said  that  womanhood  involves  all  ? 
Have  I  not  told  how  the  universe  has  nothing  better  than  the 

best  womanhood  ?  " 

Egotism  is  usually  intolerant,  but  Whitman  was 
one  of  the  most  tolerant  of  men. 

A  craving  for  sympathy  and  personal  affection 
he  certainly  had;  to  be  valued  as  a  human  being 
was  more  to  him  than  to  be  valued  as  a  poet.  His 
strongest  attachments  were  probably  for  persons  who 
had  no  opinion,  good  or  bad,  of  his  poetry  at  all. 

VI 

Under  close  scrutiny  his  egotism  turns  out  to  be 
a  kind  of  altru- egotism,  which  is  vicarious  and  all- 
inclusive  of  his  fellows.  It  is  one  phase  of  his 
democracy,  and  is  vital  and  radical  in  his  pages.  It 
is  a  high,  imperturbable  pride  in  his  manhood  and 
in  the  humanity  which  he  shares  with  all.  It  is  the 
exultant  and  sometimes  almost  arrogant  expression 
of  the  feeling  which  underlies  and  is  shaping  the 
whole  modern  world  —  the  feeling  and  conviction 
that  the  individual  man  is  above  all  forms,  laws, 
institutions,  conventions,  bibles,  religions  —  that  the 
divinity  of  kings,  and  the  sacredness  of  priests  of 
the  old  order,  pertains  to  the  humblest  person. 

It  was  a  passion  that  united  him  to  his  fellows 
rather  than  separated  him  from  them.  His  pride 


HIS    SELF-KELIANCE  99 

was  not  that  of  a  man  who  sets  himself  up  above 
others,  or  who  claims  some  special  advantage  or 
privilege,  but  that  godlike  quality  that  would  make 
others  share  its  great  good-fortune.  Hence  we  are 
not  at  all  shocked  when  the  poet,  in  the  fervor  of 
his  love  for  mankind,  determinedly  imputes  to  him 
self  all  the  sins  and  vices  and  follies  of  his  fellow- 
men.  We  rather  glory  in  it.  This  self-abasement 
is  the  seal  of  the  authenticity  of  his  egotism. 
Without  those  things  there  might  be  some  ground 
for  the  complaint  of  a  Boston  critic  of  Whitman 
that  his  work  was  not  noble,  because  it  celebrated 
pride,  and  did  not  inculcate  the  virtues  of  humility 
and  self-denial.  The  great  lesson  of  the  "Leaves," 
flowing  curiously  out  of  its  pride  and  egotism,  is  the 
lesson  of  charity,  of  self-surrender,  and  the  free  be 
stowal  of  yourself  upon  all  hands. 

The  law  of  life  of  great  art  is  the  law  of  life  in 
ethics,  and  was  long  ago  announced. 

He  that  would  lose  his  life  shall  find  it;  he  who 
gives  himself  the  most  freely  shall  the  most  freely 
receive.  Whitman  made  himself  the  brother  and 
equal  of  all,  not  in  word,  but  in  very  deed;  he  was 
in  himself  a  compend  of  the  people  for  which  he 
spoke,  and  this  breadth  of  sympathy  and  free  giving 
of  himself  has  resulted  in  an  unexpected  accession 
of  power. 


HIS    KELATION    TO    AET    AND 
LITEKATUKE 


"TTTHITMAN  protests  against  his  "Leaves"  be- 
•  *  ing  judged  merely  as  literature;  but  at  the 
same  time,  if  they  are  not  good  literature,  that  of 
course  ends  the  matter.  Still  while  the  questions 
of  art,  of  form,  of  taste,  are  paramount  in  most  other 
poets,  —  certainly  in  all  third  and  fourth  rate  poets, 
in  Whitman  they  are  swallowed  up  in  other  ques 
tions  and  values. 

In  numerous  passages,  by  various  figures  and 
allegories,  Whitman  indicates  that  he  would  not 
have  his  book  classed  with  the  order  of  mere  literary 
productions. 

"Shut  not  your  doors  to  me,  proud  libraries,"  he 
says  in  one  of  the  "Inscriptions,"  — 

"For  that  which  was  lacking  in  all  your  well-fill'd  shelves,  yet 

needed  most,  I  bring. 

Forth  from  the  war  emerging,  a  book  I  have  made, 
The  words  of  my  book  nothing,  the  drift  of  it  everything, 
A  book  separate,  not  link'd  with  the  rest  nor  felt  by  the  intellect, 
But  you,  ye  untold  latencies  will  thrill  to  every  page." 

Not  linked  with  the  studied  and  scholarly  pro 
ductions,  not  open  to  the  mere  bookish  mind,  but 
more  akin  to  the  primitive  utterances  and  oracles  of 
historic  humanity.  A  literary  age  like  ours  lays 


102  WHITMAN 


great  stress  upon  the  savor  of  books,  art,  culture, 
and  has  little  taste  for  the  savor  of  real  things,  the 
real  man,  which  we  get  in  Whitman. 

"It  is  the  true  breath  of  humanity,"  says  Kenan, 
"and  not  literary  merit,  that  constitutes  the  beauti 
ful."  An  Homeric  poem  written  to-day,  he  goes  on 
to  say,  would  not  be  beautiful,  because  it  would  not 
be  true ;  it  would  not  contain  this  breath  of  a  living 
humanity.  "It  is  not  Homer  who  is  beautiful,  it  is 
the  Homeric  life."  The  literary  spirit  begat  Tenny 
son,  begat  Browning,  begat  the  New  England  poets, 
but  it  did  not  in  the  same  sense  beget  Whitman, 
any  more  than  it  begat  Homer  or  Job  or  Isaiah. 
The  artist  may  delight  in  him  and  find  his  own 
ideals  there;  the  critic  may  study  him  and  find  the 
poet  master  of  all  his  weapons ;  the  disciple  of  cul 
ture  will  find,  as  Professor  Triggs  has  well  said,  that 
"there  is  no  body  of  writings  in  literature  which 
demands  a  wider  conversancy  with  the  best  that  has 
been  thought  or  said  in  the  world, "  —  yet  the  poet 
escapes  from  all  hands  that  would  finally  hold  him 
and  monopolize  him.  Whitman  is  an  immense  sol 
vent,  —  forms,  theories,  rules,  criticisms,  disappear 
in  his  fluid,  teeming  pages.  Much  can  be  deduced 
from  him,  because  much  went  to  the  making  up  of 
his  point  of  view.  He  makes  no  criticism,  yet  a 
far-reaching  criticism  is  implied  in  the  very  start  of 
his  poems.  No  modern  poet  presupposes  so  much, 
or  requires  so  much  preliminary  study  and  reflec 
tion.  He  brings  a  multitude  of  questions  and 
problems,  and,  what  is  singular,  he  brings  them  in 


HIS  RELATION   TO  ART  AND  LITERATURE      103 

himself;  they  are  implied  in  his  temper,  and  in  his 
attitude  toward  life  and  reality. 

Whitman  says  he  has  read  his  "Leaves"  to  him 
self  in  the  open  air,  that  he  has  tried  himself  by 
the  elemental  laws;  and  tells  us  in  many  ways, 
direct  and  indirect,  that  the  standards  he  would  be 
tried  by  are  not  those  of  art  or  books,  but  of  abso 
lute  nature.  He  has  been  laughed  at  for  calling 
himself  a  "Kosmos,"  but  evidently  he  uses  the 
term  to  indicate  this  elemental,  dynamic  character  of 
his  work,  —  its  escape  from  indoor,  artificial  stand 
ards,  its  aspiration  after  the  "amplitude  of  the 
earth,  and  the  coarseness  and  sexuality  of  the  earth, 
and  the  great  charity  of  the  earth,  and  the  equili 
brium  also." 

ii 

Unless  the  poetic  perception  is  fundamental  in 
us,  and  can  grasp  the  poetry  of  things,  actions, 
characters,  multitudes,  heroisms,  we  shall  read 
Whitman  with  very  poor  results.  Unless  America, 
the  contemporary  age,  life,  nature,  are  poetical  to 
us,  Whitman  will  not  be.  He  has  aimed  at  the 
larger  poetry  of  forces,  masses,  persons,  enthusi 
asms,  rather  than  at  the  poetry  of  the  specially  rare 
and  fine.  He  kindles  in  me  the  delight  I  have  in 
space,  freedom,  power,  the  elements,  the  cosmic, 
democracy,  and  the  great  personal  qualities  of  self- 
reliance,  courage,  candor,  charity. 

Always  in  the  literary  poets  are  we  impressed 
with  the  art  of  the  poet  as  something  distinct  from 
the  poet  himself,  and  more  or  less  put  on.  The 


104  WHITMAN 

poet  gets  himself  up  for  the  occasion;  he  assumes 
the  pose  and  the  language  of  the  poet,  as  the  priest 
assumes  the  pose  and  the  language  of  devotion.  In 
Whitman  the  artist  and  the  man  are  one.  He 
never  gets  himself  up  for  the  occasion.  Our  pleas 
ure  in  him  is  rarely  or  never  our  pleasure  in  the 
well-dressed,  the  well-drilled,  the  cultivated,  the 
refined,  the  orderly,  but  it  is  more  akin  to  our  pleas 
ure  in  real  things,  in  human  qualities  and  powers, 
in  freedom,  health,  development.  /Yet  I  never 
open  his  hook  without  being  struck  afresh  with  its 
pictural  quality,  its  grasp  of  the  concrete,  its  vivid 
realism,  its  intimate  sense  of  things,  persons,  truths, 
qualities,  such  as  only  the  greatest  artists  can  give 
us,  and  such  as  we  can  never  get  in  mere  prose. 
It  is  as  direct  as  a  challenge,  as  personal  as  a  hand 
shake,  and  yet  withal  how  mystical,  how  elusive, 
how  incommensurable !  To  deny  that  Whitman  be 
longs  to  the  fraternity  of  great  artists,  the  shapers 
and  moulders  of  the  ideal,  —  those  who  breathe  the 
breath  of  life  into  the  clay  or  stone  of  common  facts 
and  objects,  who  make  all  things  plastic  and  the 
vehicles  of  great  and  human  emotions, —  is  to  read 
him  very  inadequately,  to  say  the  least.  To  get  at 
Walt  Whitman  you  must  see  through  just  as  much 
as  you  do  in  dealing  with  nature;  you  are  to  bring 
the  same  interpretive  imagination.  You  are  not  to 
be  balked  by  what  appears  to  be  the  coarse  and  the 
familiar,  or  his  rank  contemporaneity;  after  a  time 
you  will  surely  see  the  lambent  spiritual  flames  that 
play  about  it  all. 


HIS  RELATION  TO  ART  AND  LITERATURE  105 
"Prophetic  spirit  of  materials  shifting  and  flickering  about  me," 
and  his  cosmic  splendor,  depth,  and  power.  It  is 
not  the  denial  of  art,  it  is  a  new  affirmation  of  life. 
It  is  one  phase  of  his  democracy.  It  is  the  logi 
cal  conclusion  of  the  vestless  and  coatless  portrait 
of  himself  that  appeared  in  the  first  edition  of  his 
poems.  He  would  give  us  more  of  the  man,  a 
fuller  measure  of  personal,  concrete,  human  qualities, 
than  any  poet  before  him.  He  strips  away  the  arti 
ficial  wrappings  and  illusions  usual  in  poetry,  and 
relies  entirely  upon  the  native  and  intrinsic.  He 
will  have  no  curtains,  he  says,  —  not  the  finest,  — 
between  himself  and  his  reader. 

"  Stop  this  day  and  night  with  me  and  you  shall  possess  the 
origin  of  all  poems, 

You  shall  possess  the  good  of  the  earth  and  sun  (there  are  mil 
lions  of  suns  left), 

You  shall  no  longer  take  things  at  second  or  third  hand,  nor  look 
through  the  eyes  of  the  dead,  nor  feed  on  the  spectres  in 
books, 

You  shall  not  look  through  my  eyes  either,  nor  take  things  from 
me, 

You  shall  listen  to  all  sides  and  filter  them  from  yourself." 

This  is  a  hint  of  his  democracy  as  applied  to 
literature,  —  more  direct  and  immediate  contact  with 
the  primary  and  universal,  less  of  the  vestments  and 
trappings  of  art  and  more  of  the  push  and  power  of 
original  character  and  of  nature. 

in 

It  seems  to  me  it  is  always  in  order  to  protest 
against  the  narrow  and  dogmatic  spirit  that  so  often 
crops  out  in  current  criticism  touching  this  matter 


106  WHITMAN 

of  art.  "  The  boundaries  of  art  are  jealously 
guarded,"  says  a  recent  authority,  as  if  art  had 
boundaries  like  a  state  or  province  that  had  been 
accurately  surveyed  and  fixed,  —  as  if  art  was  a  fact 
and  not  a  spirit. 

Now  I  shall  deny  at  the  outset  that  there  are 
any  bounds  of  art,  or  that  art  is  in  any  seijse  an 
"enclosure," — a  province  fenced  off  and  set  apart 
from  the  rest,  —  any  more  than  religion  is  an  enclo 
sure,  though  so  many  people  would  like  to  make  it 
so.  Art  is  commensurate  with  the  human  spirit.  I 
should  even  deny  that  there  are  any  principles  of 
art  in  the  sense  that  there  are  principles  of  mechan 
ics  or  of  mathematics.  Art  has  but  one  principle, 
one  aim,  —  to  produce  an  impression,  a  powerful 
impression,  no  matter  by  what  means,  or  if  it  be 
by  reversing  all  the  canons  of  taste  and  criticism. 
Name  any  principle,  so  called,  and  some  day  a  gen 
ius  'shall  be  born  who  will  produce  his  effects  in 
defiance  of  it,  or  by  appearing  to  reverse  it.  Such 
a  man  as  Turner  seemed,  at  first  sight,  to  set  at 
defiance  all  correct  notions  of  art.  The  same  with 
Wagner  in  music,  the  same  with  Whitman  in 
poetry.  The  new  man  is  impossible  till  he  appears, 
and,  when  he  appears,  in  proportion  to  his  originality 
and  power  does  it  take  the  world  a  longer  or 
shorter  time  to  adjust  its  critical  standards  to  him. 
But  it  is  sure  to  do  so  at  last.  There  is  nothing 
final  in  art:  its  principles  follow  and  do  not  lead 
the  creator;  they  are  deductions  from  his  work, 
not  its  inspiration.  We  demand  of  the  new  man, 


HIS  RELATION   TO  ART  AND  LITERATURE      107 

of  the  overthrower  of  our  idols,  but  one  thing,  —  has 
he  authentic  inspiration  and  power  ?  If  he  has  not, 
his  pretensions  are  soon  exploded.  If  he  has,  we 
cannot  put  him  down,  any  more  than  we  can  put 
down  a  law  of  nature,  and  we  very  soon  find  some 
principle  of  art  that  fits  his  case.  Is  there  no  room 
for  the  new  man?  But  the  new  man  makes  room 
for  himself,  and  if  he  be  of  the  first  order  he  largely 
makes  the  taste  by  which  he  is  appreciated,  and  the 
rules  of  art  by  which  he  is  to  be  judged. 

IV 

The  trouble  with  most  of  us  is  that  we  found  our 
taste  for  poetry  upon  particular  authors,  instead  of 
upon  literature  as  a  whole,  or,  better  yet,  upon  life 
and  reality.  Hence  we  form  standards  instead  of 
principles.  Standards  are  limited,  rigid,  uncom 
promising,  while  principles  are  flexible,  expansive, 
creative.  If  we  are  wedded  to  the  Miltonic  stand 
ard  of  poetry,  the  classic  standards,  we  shall  have 
great  difficulties  with  Whitman ;  but  if  we  have 
founded  our  taste  upon  natural  principles  —  if  we 
have  learned  to  approach  literature  through  reality, 
instead  of  reality  through  literature  —  we  ehall  not 
be  the  victims  of  any  one  style  or  model;  we  shall 
be  made  free  of  all.  The  real  test  of  art,  of  any 
art,  as  Burke  long  »ago  said,  and  as  quoted  by  Mr. 
Howells  in  his  trenchant  little  volume  called  "  Criti 
cism  «and  Fiction,"  is  to  be  sought  outside  of  art, 
namely,  in  nature.  "I  can  judge  but  poorly  of  any 
thing  while  I  measure  it  by  no  other  standard  than 


108  WHITMAN 

itself.  The  true  standard  of  the  arts  is  in  every 
man's  power;  and  an  easy  observation  of  the  most 
common,  sometimes  of  the  meanest,  things  in  nature 
will  give  the  truest  lights."  It  is  thought  that 
the  preeminence  of  the  Greek  standards  is  settled 
when  we  say  they  are  natural.  Yes,  but  Nature  is 
not  Greek.  She  is  Asiatic,  German,  English,  as 
well. 

v 

In  poetry,  in  art,  a  man  must  sustain  a  certain 
vital  relation  to  his  work,  and  that  work  must  sus 
tain  a  certain  vital  relation  to  the  laws  of  mind  and 
of  life.  That  is  all,  and  that  leaves  the  doors  very 
wide.  We  are  not  to  ask,  Is  it  like  this  or  like 
that?  but,  Is  it  vital,  is  it  real,  is  it  a  consistent, 
well-organized  whole? 

The  poet  must  always  interpret  himself  and 
nature  after  his  own  fashion.  Is  his  fashion  ade 
quate  ?  Is  the  interpretation  vivid  and  real  ?  Do 
his  lines  cut  to  the  quick,  and  beget  heat  and  joy 
in  the  soul?  'If  we  cannot  make  the  poet's  ideal 
our  own  by  sharing  his  enthusiasm  for  it,  the  trou 
ble  is  as  likely  to  be  in  ourselves  as  in  him.  In 
any  case  he  must  be  a  law  unto  himself. 

^The  creative  artist  differs  from  the  mere  writer 
or  thinker  in  this :  he  sustains  a  direct  personal  rela 
tion  to  his  subject  through  emotion,  intuition,  will.. 
The  indirect,  impersonal  relation  which  works  by 
reflection,  comparison,  and  analysis  is  that  of  the 
critic  and  philosopher.  The  man  is  an  artist  when 
he  gives  us  a  concrete  and  immediate  impression  of 


HIS  RELATION   TO  ART  AND  LITERATURE      109 

reality:  from  his  hands  we  get  the  thing  itself; 
from  the  critic  and  thinker  we  get  ideas  about  the 
thing.  The  poet  does  not  merely  say  the  world  is 
beautiful;  he  shows  it  as  beautiful:  he  does  not 
describe  the  flower;  he  places  it  before  us.  What 
are  the  enemies  of  art?  Reflection,  didacticism, 
description,  the  turgid,  the  obscure.  A  poet  with 
a  thesis  to  sustain  is  more  or  less  barred  from  the 
freedom  of  pure  art.  It  is  by  direct  and  unconsid- 
ered  expression,  says  Scherer,  that  art  communicates 
with  reality.  The  things  that  make  for  art,  then, 
are  feeling,  intuition,  sentiment,  soul,  a  fresh  and 
vigorous  sense  of  real  things,  —  in  fact,  all  that 
makes  for  life,  health,  and  wholeness.  Goethe  is 
more  truly  an  artist  in  the  first  part  of  Faust  than 
in  the  second;  Arnold  has  a  more  truly  artistic 
mind  than  Lowell. 

The  principles  of  art  are  always  the  same  in  the 
respect  I  have  indicated,  just  as  the  principles  of 
life  are  always  the  same,  or  of  health  and  longevity 
are  always  the  same.  No  writer  is  an  artist  who 
is  related  to  his  subject  simply  by  mental  or  logical 
grip  alone:  he  must  have  a  certain  emotional  affil 
iation  and  identity  with  it;  he  does  not  so  much 
convey  to  us  ideas  and  principles  as  pictures,  para 
bles,  impressions,  —  a  lively  sense  of  real  things. 
When  we  put  Whitman  outside  the  pale  of  art,  we 
must  show  his  shortcomings  here ;  we  must  show 
that  he  is  not  fluid  and  generative,  —  that  he  paints 
instead  of  interprets,  that  he  gives  us  reasons  in 
stead  of  impulses,  a  stone  when  we  ask  for  bread. 


110  WHITMAN 

"  I  do  not  give  a  little  charity, "  he  says ;  "  when  I 
give,  I  give  myself."  This  the  artist  always  does, 
not  his  mind  merely,  but  his  soul,  his  personality. 
"  Leaves  of  Grass  "  is  as  direct  an  emanation  from 
a  central  personal  force  as  any  book  in  literature, 
and  always  carries  its  own  test  and  its  own  proof. 
It  never  hardens  into  a  system,  it  never  ceases  to 
be  penetrated  with  will  and  emotion,  it  never  de 
clines  from  the  order  of  deeds  to  the  order  of  mere 
thoughts.  All  is  movement,  progress,  evolution, 
picture,  parable,  impulse. 

It  is  on  these  grounds  that  Whitman,  first  of  all, 
is  an  artist.  He  has  the  artist  temperament.  His 
whole  life  was  that  of  a  man  who  lives  to  ideal 
ends,  —  who  lived  to  bestow  himself  upon  others,  to 
extract  from  life  its  meaning  and  its  joy. 

VI 

Whitman  has  let  himself  go,  and  trusted  himself 
to  the  informal  and  spontaneous,  to  a  degree  un 
precedented.  His  course  required  a  self-reliance  of 
the  highest  order;  it  required  an  innate  cohesion 
and  homogeneity,  a  firmness  and  consistency  of  in 
dividual  outline,  that  few  men  have.  It  would 
seem  to  be  much  easier  to  face  the  poet's  problem 
in  the  old,  well-worn  forms  —  forms  that  are  so 
winsome  and  authoritative  in  themselves  —  than  to 
stand  upon  a  basis  so  individual  and  intrinsic  as 
Whitman  chose  to  stand  upon.  His  course  goes  to 
the  quick  at  once.  How  much  of  a  man  are  you? 
How  vital  and  fundamental  is  your  poetic  gift? 
Can  it  go  alone  ?  Can  it  face  us  in  undress  ? 


HIS   RELATION   TO   ART  AND   LITERATURE      111 

Never  did  the  artist  more  cunningly  conceal  him 
self;  never  did  he  so  completely  lose  himself  in  the 
man,  identifying  himself  with  the  natural  and  spon 
taneous;  never  emerging  and  challenging  attention 
on  his  own  account,  denying  us  when  we  too  liter 
ally  seek  him,  mocking  us  when  we  demand  his 
credentials,  and  revealing  himself  only  when  we 
have  come  to  him  upon  his  own  terms. 

The  form  the  poet  chose  favored  this  self-revela 
tion;  there  is  nothing,  no  outside  conscious  art,  to 
stand  between  himself  and  his  reader.  "This... is 
no  book,"  he  says:  "who  touches  this  touches  a 
man."  In  one  sense  Whitman  is  without  art,  —  the 
impression  which  he  always  seeks  to  make  is  that 
of  reality  itself.  He  aims  to  give  us  reality  with 
out  the  usual  literary  veils  and  illusions,  —  the 
least  possible  amount  of  the  artificial,  the  extrinsic, 
the  put-on,  between  himself  and  his  reader.  He 
banishes  from  his  work,  as  far  as  possible,  what 
others  are  so  intent  upon,  —  all  atmosphere  of  books 
and  culture,  all  air  of  literary  intention  and  deco 
ration,  —  and  puts  his  spirit  frankly  and  immedi 
ately  to  his  readers.  The  verse  does  not  seem  to 
have  been  shaped;  it  might  have  grown:  it  takes 
no  apparent  heed  of  externals,  but  flows  on  like  a 
brook,  irregular,  rhythmical,  and  always  fluid  and 
real.  A  cry  will  always  be  raised  against  the  pro 
ducer  in  any  field  who  discards  the  authority  of  the 
models  and  falls  back  upon  simple  Nature,  or  upon 
himself,  as  Millet  did  in  painting,  and  Wagner  in 
music,  and  Whitman  in  poetry. 


112  WHITMAN 

Whitman's  working  ideas,  the  principles  that 
inspired  him,  are  all  directly  related  to  life  and  the 
problems  of  life;  they  are  democracy,  nature,  free 
dom,  love,  personality,  religion:  while  the  ideas 
from  which  our  poets  in  the  main  draw  their  inspi 
ration  are  related  to  art,  —  they  are  literary  ideas, 
such  as  lucidity,  form,  beauty. 

VII 

Much  light  is  thrown  upon  Whitman's  literary 
methods  and  aims  by  a  remark  which  he  once  made 
in  conversation  with  Dr.  Bucke :  — 

"  I  have  aimed  to  make  the  book  simple,  —  taste 
less,  or  with  little  taste,  —  with  very  little  or  no  per 
fume.  The  usual  way  is  for  the  poet  or  writer  to 
put  in  as  much  taste,  perfume,  piquancy,  as  he  can; 
but  this  is  not  the  way  of  nature,  which  I  take 
for  model.  Nature  presents  us  her  productions 
—  her  air,  earth,  waters,  even  her  flowers,  grains, 
meats  —  with  faint  and  delicate  flavor  and  fragrance, 
but  these  in  the  long  run  make  the  deepest  impres 
sion.  Man,  dealing  with  natural  things,  constantly 
aims  to  increase  their  piquancy.  By  crossing  and 
selection  he  deepens  and  intensifies  the  scents  and 
hues  of  flowers,  the  tastes  of  fruits,  and  so  on.  He 
pursues  the  same  method  in  poetry,  —  that  is, 
strives  for  strong  light  or  shade,  for  high  color, 
perfume,  pungency,  in  all  ways  for  the  greatest  im 
mediate  effect.  In  so  doing  he  leaves  the  true  way, 
the  way  of  Nature,  and,  in  the  long  run,  comes  far 
short  of  producing  her  effects." 


HIS   RELATION   TO   ART  AND   LITERATURE      113 

More  light  of  the  same  kind  is  thrown  upon  his 
methods  by  the  following  passage  from  the  preface 
to  the  first  edition  of  his  poems  in  1855. 

7*^0  speak  in  literature,"  he  says,  "with  the 
perfect  rectitude  and  insouciance  of  the  movements 
of  animals,  and  the  unimpeachableness  of  the  senti 
ment  of  trees  in  the  woods  and  grass  by  the  road 
side,  is  the  flawless  triumph  of  art.'i_  And  again: 
"The  great  poet  has  less  a  marked  style,  and  is 
more  the  channel  of  thoughts  and  things  without 
increase  or  diminution,  and  is  the  free  channel  of 
himself.  He  swears  to  his  art,  I  will  not  be  med 
dlesome;  I  will  not  have  in  my  writing  any  ele 
gance,  or  effect,  or  originality,  to  hang  in  the  way 
between  me  and  the  rest  like  curtains.  I  will  have 
nothing  hang  in  the  way,  not  the  richest  curtains. 
What  I  tell,  I  tell  for  precisely  what  it  is.  Let 
who  may  exalt  or  startle  or  fascinate  or  soothe,  I 
will  have  purpose,  as  health  or 'heat  or  snow  has, 
and  be  as  regardless  of  observation.  What  I  experi 
ence  or  portray  shall  go  from  my  composition  with 
out  a  shred  of  my  composition.  You  shall  stand 
by  my  side  and  look  in  the  mirror  with  me." 

V* 

VIII 

But  in  view  of  the  profound  impression  Whit 
man's  work  has  made  upon  widely  different  types 
of  mind  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic,  and  in  view 
of  the  persistent  vitality  of  his  fame,  the  ques 
tion  whether  he  is  inside  or  outside  the  pale  of  art 
amounts  to  very  little.  I  quite  agree  with  the  late 


114  WHITMAN 

Mrs.  Gilchrist,  that,  when  "great  meanings  and 
great  emotions  are  expressed  with  corresponding 
power,  literature  has  done  its  best,  call  it  what  you 
please." 

That  Whitman  has  expressed  great  meanings  and 
great  emotions  with  adequate  power,  even  his  un 
friendly  critics  admit.  Thus  Professor  Wendell,  in 
an  admirable  essay  on  American  literature,  says 
that  "  though  Whitman  is  uncouth,  inarticulate,  and 
lacking  in  a  grotesque  degree  artistic  form,  yet  for 
all  that  he  can  make  you  feel  for  the  moment  how 
even  the  ferry-boats  plying  from  New  York  to 
Brooklyn  are  fragments  of  God's  eternities."  In 
the  same  way  Mr.  William  Clark,  his  British  critic 
and  expounder,  says  that  he  is  wanting  in  discrimi 
nation  and  art,  "flings  his  ideas  at  us  in  a  heap," 
etc.,  and  yet  that  the  effect  of  his  work  is  "to  stir 
our  emotions,  widen  our  interests,  and  rally  the 
forces  of  our  moral  nature." 

It  seems  to  me  that  a  man  who,  through  the 
printed  page,  can  do  these  things,  must  have  some 
kind  of  art  worth  considering.  If,  through  his  im 
passioned  treatment  of  a  prosy,  commonplace  object 
like  a  ferry-boat,  he  can  so  dignify  and  exalt  it,  and 
so  fill  it  with  the  meanings  of  the  spirit,  that  it 
seems  like  a  part  of 'God's  eternities,  his  methods 
are  at  least  worth  inquiring  into. 

The  truth  is,  Whitman's  art,  in  its  lack  of  extrin 
sic  form  and  finish,  is  Oriental  rather  than  Occiden 
tal,  and  is  an  offense  to  a  taste  founded  upon  the 
precision  and  finish  of  a  mechanical  age.  His  verse 


HIS   RELATION   TO   ART   AND   LITERATURE      115 

is  like  the  irregular,  slightly  rude  coin  of  the 
Greeks  compared  with  the  exact,  machine-cut  dies 
of  our  own  day,  or  like  the  unfinished  look  of 
Japanese  pottery  beside  the  less  beautiful  but  more 
perfect  specimens  of  modern  ceramic  art. 

For  present  purposes,  we  may  say  there  are  two 
phases  of  art,  —  formal  art  and  creative  art.  By 
formal  art  I  mean  that  which  makes  a  direct  appeal 
to  our  sense  of  form, — our  sense  of  the  finely 
carved,  the  highly  wrought,  the  deftly  planned; 
and  by  creative  art  I  mean  that  quickening,  fructi 
fying  power  of  the  masters,  that  heat  and  passion 
that  make  the  world  plastic  and  submissive  to  their 
hands,  teeming  with  new  meanings  and  thrilling 
with  new  life. 

Formal  art  is  always  in  the  ascendant.  Formal 
anything  —  formal  dress,  formal  manners,  formal  reli 
gion,  formal  this  and  that  —  always  counts  for  more 
than  the  informal,  the  spontaneous,  the  original. 
It  is  easier,  it  can  be  put  off  and  on. 

Formal  art  is  nearly  always  the  gift  of  the  minor 
poet,  and  often  of  the  major  poet  also.  In  such 
a  poet  as  Swinburne,  formal  art  leads  by  a  great 
way.  The  content  of  his  verse,  —  what  is  it  ?  In 
Tennyson  as  well  I  should  say  formal  art  is  in  the 
ascendant.  Creative  art  is  his  also  ;  Tennyson 
reaches  and  moves  the  spirit,  yet  his  skill  is  more 
noteworthy  than  his  power.  In  Wordsworth,  on 
the  other  hand,  I  should  say  creative  art  led:  the 
content  of  his  verse  is  more  than  its  form ;  his  spirit 
ual  and  religious  values  are  greater  than  his  literary 


116  WHITMAN 

and  artistic.  The  same  is  true  of  our  own  Emer 
son.  Poe,  again,  is  much  more  as  an  artist  than  as 
a  man  or  a  personality. 

I  hardly  need  say  that  in  Whitman  formal  art, 
the  ostensibly  artistic,  counts  for  but  very  little. 
The  intentional  artist,  the  professional  poet,  is  kept 
entirely  in  abeyance,  or  is  completely  merged  and 
hidden  in  the  man,  more  so  undoubtedly  than  in 
any  poet  this  side  the  old  Oriental  bards.  We  call 
him  formless,  chaotic,  amorphous,  etc.,  because  he 
makes  no  appeal  to  our  modern  highly  stimulated 
sense  of  art  or  artificial  form.  We  must  discrimi 
nate  this  from  our  sense  of  power,  our  sense  of 
life,  our  sense  of  beauty,  of  the  sublime,  of  the 
all,  which  clearly  Whitman  would  reach  and  move. 
Whitman  certainly  has  a  form  of  his  own:  what 
would  a  poet,  or  any  writer  or  worker  in  the  ideal, 
do  without  some  kind  of  form  ?  some  consistent  and 
adequate  vehicle  of  expression?  But  Whitman's 
form  is  not  what  is  called  artistic,  because  it  is  not 
brought  within  the  rules  of  the  prosodical  system, 
and  does  not  appeal  to  our  sense  of  the  consciously 
shaped  and  cultivated.  ~li  is  essentially  the  prose 
form  heightened  and  intensified  by  a  deep,  strong, 
lyric  and  prophetic  note. 

The  bonds  and  shackles  of  regular  verse-form 
Whitman  threw  off.  _  This  course  seemed  to  be 
demanded  by  the  spirit  to  which  he  had  dedicated 
himself,  —  the  spirit  of  absolute  unconstraint.  The 
restrictions  and  hamper  ings  of  the  scholastic  forms 
did  not  seem  to  be  consistent  with  this  spirit,  which 


HIS   RELATION   TO  ART  AND  LITERATURE      117 

he  identified  with  democracy  and  the  New  World. 
A  poet  who  sets  out  to  let  down  the  bars  every 
where,  to  remove  veils  and  obstructions,  to  emulate 
the  freedom  of  the  elemental  forces,  to  effuse  always 
the  atmosphere  of  open-air  growths  and  objects,  to 
be  as  "  regardless  of  observation "  as  the  processes 
of  nature,  etc. ,  will  not  be  apt  to  take  kindly  to 
any  arbitrary  and  artificial  form  of  expression.  The 
essentially  prose  form  which  Whitman  chose  is  far 
more  in  keeping  with  the  spirit  and  aim  of  his 
work  than  any  conventional  metrical  system  could 
have  been.  _\  Had  he  wrought  solely  as  a  conscious 
artist,  aiming  at  the  effect  of  finely  chiseled  forms, 
he  would  doubtless  have  chosen  a  different  medium. 

IX 

Whitman  threw  himself  with  love  and  enthu 
siasm  upon  this  great,  crude,  seething,  materialistic 
American  world.  The  question  is,  Did  he  master 
it  ?  Is  he  adequate  to  absorb  and  digest  it  ?  Does 
he  make  man-stuff  of  it  1  Is  it  plastic  in  his  hands  ? 
Does  he  stamp  it  with  his  own  image  ?  I  do  not 
ask,  Does  he  work  it  up  into  what  are  called  artistic 
forms?  Does  he  make  it  the  quarry  from  which 
he  carves  statues  or  builds  temples?  because  evi 
dently  he  does  not  do  this,  or  assume  to  do  it.  He 
is  content  if  he  present  America  and  the  modern  to 
us  as  they  are  inwrought  into  his  own  personality, 
bone  of  his  bone  and  flesh  of  his  flesh,  or  as  char 
acter,  passion,  will,  motive,  conviction.  He  would 
show  them  subjectively  and  as  living  impulses  in 


118  WHITMAN 

himself.  Of  course  a  great  constructive,  dramatic 
poet  like  Shakespeare  would  have  solved  his  prob 
lem  in  a  different  manner,  or  through  the  objec 
tive,  artistic  portrayal  of  types  and  characters.  But 
the  poet  and  prophet  of  democracy  and  of  egotism 
shows  us  all  things  in  and  through  himself. 

His  egotism,  or  egocentric  method,  is  the  funda 
mental  fact  about  his  work.  It  colors  all  and  de 
termines  all.  The  poems  are  the  direct  outgrowth 
of  the  personality  of  the  poet;  they  are  born  di 
rectly  upon  the  ego,  as  it  were,  like  the  fruit  of 
that  tropical  tree  which  grows  immediately  upon 
the  trunk.  His  work  is  nearer  his  radical,  primary 
self  than  that  of  most  poets.  He  never  leads  us 
away  from  himself  into  pleasant  paths  with  enticing 
flowers  of  fancy  or  forms  of  art.  He  carves  or 
shapes  nothing  for  its  own  sake ;  there  is  little  in 
the  work  that  can  stand  on  independent  grounds  as 
pure  art.  His  work  is  not  material  made  precious 
by  elaboration  and  finish,  but  by  its  relation  to  him 
self  and  to  the  sources  of  life. 


Whitman  was  compelled  to  this  negation  of  ex 
trinsic  art  by  the  problem  he  had  set  before  himself, 
—  first,  to  arouse,  to  suggest,  rather  than  to  finish  or 
elaborate,  less  to  display  any  theme  or  thought  than 
"to  bring  the  reader  into  the  atmosphere  of  the 
theme  or  thought ; "  secondly,  to  make  his  own  per 
sonality  the  chief  factor  in  the  volume,  or  present 
it  so  that  the  dominant  impression  should  always 


HIS  RELATION  TO  ART  AND  LITERATURE      119 

be  that  of  the  living,  breathing  man  as  we  meet  him 
and  see  him  and  feel  him  in  life,  and  never  as  we 
see  him  and  feel  him  in  books  or  art,  —  the  man  in 
the  form  and  garb  of  actual,  concrete  life,  not  as 
poet  or  artist,  but  simply  as  man.  This  is  doubt 
less  the  meaning  of  the  vestless  and  coatless  portrait 
of  himself  prefixed  to  the  first  issue  of  the  " Leaves," 
to  which  I  have  referred.  This  portrait  is  symboli 
cal  of  the  whole  attitude  of  the  poet  toward  his 
task.  It  was  a  hint  that  we  must  take  this  poet 
with  very  little  literary  tailoring;  it  was  a  hint  that 
he  belonged  to  the  open  air,  and  came  of  the  people 
and  spoke  in  their  spirit. 

It  is  never  the  theme  treated,  but  always  the 
character  exploited;  never  the  structure  finished, 
but  always  the  plan  suggested;  never  the  work 
accomplished,  but  always  the  impulse  imparted,  — 
freedom,  power,  growth. 

"  Aliens  !  we  must  not  stop  here. 

However  sweet  these  laid-up  stores,  however  convenient  this 
dwelling,  we  cannot  remain  here, 

However  sheltered  this  port,  or  however  calm  these  waters,  we 
must  not  anchor  here, 

However  welcome  the  hospitality  that  surrounds  us  we  are  per 
mitted  to  receive  it  but  a  little  while. 

"  Allons  !    With  power,  liberty,  the  earth,  the  elements  ! 

Health,  defiance,  gayety,  self-esteem,  curiosity  ; 

Allons  !  from  all  formulas  ! 

From  your  formulas,  O  bat-eyed  and  materialistic  priests  !  " 

This  magnificent  poem,  "  The  Song  of  the  Open 
R-oad,"  is  one  of  the  most  significant  in  Whit 
man's  work.  He  takes  the  open  road  as  his  type, 
—  not  an  end  in  itself,  not  a  fulfillment,  but  a  start, 


120  WHITMAN 

a  journey,  a  progression.  It  teaches  him  the  pro 
found  lesson  of  reception,  "  no  preference  nor  denial, " 
and  the  prof ounder  lesson  of  liberty  and  truth :  — 

"  From  this  hour,  freedom ! 

From  this  hour  I  ordain  myself  loosed  of  limits  and  imaginary 

lines, 

Going  where  I  list  —  my  own  master,  total  and  absolute, 
Listening  to  others,  and  considering  well  what  they  say, 
Pausing,  searching,  receiving,  contemplating, 
Gently,  but  with  undeniable  will,  divesting  myself  of  the  holds 

that  would  hold  me. 

"  I  inhale  great  draughts  of  air, 

The  east  and  the  west  are  mine,  and  the  north  and  the  south  are 
mine." 

He  will  not  rest  with  art,  he  will  not  rest  with 
books,  he  will  press  his  way  steadily  toward  the 
largest  freedom. 

"Only  the  kernel  of  every  object  nourishes. 
Where  is  he  who  tears  off  the  husks  for  you  and  me  ? 
Where  is  he  who  undoes  stratagems  and  envelopes  for  you  and 
me?" 

Whitman  was  not  a  builder.  If  he  had  the 
architectural  power  which  the  great  poets  have 
shown,  he  gave  little  proof  of  it.  It  was  not  re 
quired  by  the  task  he  set  before  himself.  His  book 
is  not  a  temple:  it  is  a  wood,  a  field,  a  highway; 
vista,  vista,  everywhere,  —  vanishing  lights  and 
shades,  truths  half  disclosed,  successions  of  objects, 
hints,  suggestions,  brief  pictures,  groups,  voices,  con 
trasts,  blendings,  and,  above  all,  the  tonic  quality  of 
the  open  air.  The  shorter  poems  are  like  bunches 
of  herbs  or  leaves,  or  a  handful  of  sprays  gathered 
in  a  walk ;  never  a  thought  carefully  carved,  and  ap 
pealing  to  our  sense  of  artistic  form. 


HIS  RELATION   TO  ART  AND  LITERATURE      121 

The  main  poem  of  the  book,  "  The  Song  of  My 
self,"  is  a  series  of  utterances,  ejaculations,  apostro 
phes,  enumerations,  associations,  pictures,  parables, 
incidents,  suggestions,  with  little  or  no  structural 
or  logical  connection,  but  all  emanating  from  a  per 
sonality  whose  presence  dominates  the  page,  and 
whose  eye  is  ever  upon  us.  Without  this  vivid  and 
intimate  sense  of  the  man  back  of  all,  of  a  sane  and 
powerful  spirit  sustaining  ours,  the  piece  would  be 
wild  and  inchoate. 

x\ 

XI 

The  reader  will  be  sure  to  demand  of  Whitman 
ample  compensation  for  the  absence  from  his  work 
of  those  things  which  current  poets  give  us  in  such 
full  measure.  Whether  or  not  the  compensation  is 
ample,  whether  the  music  of  his  verse  as  of  winds 
and  waves,  the  long,  irregular,  dithyrambic  move 
ment,  its  fluid  and  tonic  character,  the  vastness  of 
conception,  the  large,  biblical  speech,  the  surging 
cosmic  emotion,  the  vivid  personal  presence  as  of 
the  living  man  looking  into  your  eye  or  walking  by 
your  side,  —  whether  all  these  things,  the  refresh 
ing  quality  as  of  "harsh  salt  spray"  which  the 
poet  Lanier  found  in  the  "Leaves,"  the  electric  cur 
rents  which  Mrs.  Gilchrist  found  there,  the  "un 
excelled  imaginative  justice  of  language  "  which  Mr. 
Stevenson  at  times  found,  the  religious  liberation 
and  faith  which  Mr.  Symonds  found,  the  "incom 
parable  things  incomparably  well  said  "  of  Emerson, 
the  rifle- bullets  of  Kuskin,  the  "supreme  words" 


122  WHITMAN 

of  Colonel  Ingersoll,  etc. ,  —  whether  qualities  and 
effects  like  these,  I  say,  make  up  to  us  for  the 
absence  of  the  traditional  poetic  graces  and  adorn 
ments,  is  a  question  which  will  undoubtedly  long 
divide  the  reading  world. 

In  the  works  upon  which  our  poetic  taste  is 
founded,  artistic  form  is  paramount;  we  have  never 
been  led  to  apply  to  such  works  open-air  standards, 
—  clouds,  trees,  rivers,  spaces,  —  but  the  precision 
and  definiteness  of  the  cultured  and  the  artificial. 
If  Whitman  had  aimed  at  pure  art  and  had  failed, 
his  work  would  be  intolerable.  As  his  French 
critic,  Gabriel  Sarrazin,  has  well  said:  "In  the 
large  work  which  Whitman  attempted,  there  come 
no  rules  save  those  of  nobility  and  strength  of 
spirit;  and  these  suffice  amply  to  create  a  most 
unlocked  -  for  and  grandiose  aspect  of  beauty. " 
"Overcrowded  and  disorderly"  as  it  may  seem,  "if 
heroic  emotion  and  thought  and  enthusiasm  vitalize 
it,"  the  poet  has  reached  his  goal. 

XII 

Sometimes  I  define  Whitman  to  myself  as  the 
poet  of  the  open  air,N^ —  not  because  he  sings  the 
praises  of  these  things  after  the  manner  of  the  so- 
called  nature-poets,  but  because  he  has  the  quality 
of  things  in  the  open  air,  the  quality  of  the  un 
housed,  the  untamed,  the  elemental  and  aboriginal. 
He  pleases  and  he  offends,  the  same  way  things  at 
large  do.  He  has  the  brawn,  the  indifference,  the 
rudeness,  the  virility,  the  coarseness,  —  something 


HIS  RELATION  TO   ART  AND  LITERATURE      123 

gray,  unpronounced,  elemental,  about  him,  the  effect 
of  mass,  size,  distance,  flowing,  vanishing  lines,  neu 
tral  spaces,  —  something  informal,  multitudinous, 
and  processional,  —  something  regardless  of  criti 
cism,  that  makes  no  bid  for  our  applause,  not  calcu 
lated  instantly  to  please,  unmindful  of  details,  pro 
saic  if  we  make  it  so,  common,  near  at  hand,  and 
yet  that  provokes  thought  and  stirs  our  emotions  in 
an  unusual  degree.  The  long  lists  and  catalogues  of 
objects  and  scenes  in  Whitman,  that  have  so  excited 
the  mirth  of  the  critics,  are  one  phase  of  his  out-of- 
doors  character,  — a  multitude  of  concrete  objects,  a 
grove,  a  thicket,  a  field,  a  stretch  of  beach,  —  every 
object  sharply  defined,  but  no  attempt  at  logical  or 
artistic  sequence,  the  effect  of  the  whole  informal, 
multitudinous.  It  may  be  objected  to  these  pages 
that  they  consist  of  a  mass  of  details  that  do  not  make 
a  picture.  But  every  line  is  a  picture  of  a  scene  or 
an  object.  Whitman  always  keeps  up  the  move 
ment,  he  never  pauses  to  describe;  it  is  all  action. 

Passing  from  such  a  poet  as  Tennyson  to  Whit 
man  is  like  going  from  a  warm,  perfumed  interior, 
with  rich  hangings,  pictures,  books,  statuary,  fine 
men  and  women,  out  into  the  street,  or  upon  the 
beach,  or  upon  the  hill,  or  under  the  midnight  stars. 
We  lose  something  certainly,  but  do  we  not  gain 
something  also1?  Do  we  not  gain  just  what  Whit 
man  had  in  view,  namely,  direct  contact  with  the 
elements  in  which  are  the  sources  of  our  life  and 
health?  Do  we  not  gain  in  scope  and  power  what 
we  lose  in  art  and  refinement? 


124  WHITMAN 

The  title,  "Leaves  of  Grass,"  is  full  of  meaning. 
What  self  -  knowledge  and  self  -  scrutiny  it  implies ! 
The  grass,  perennial  sprouting,  universal,  formless, 
common,  the  always  spread  feast  of  the  herds,  dotted 
with  flowers,  the  herbage  of  the  earth,  so  sugges 
tive  of  the  multitudinous,  loosely  aggregated,  une- 
laborated  character  of  the  book;  the  lines  springing 
directly  out  of  the  personality  of  the  poet,  the  soil 
of  his  life. 

"What  is  commonest,  cheapest,  nearest,  easiest  is  me," 

says  the  poet,  and  this  turns  out  to  be  the  case.  We 
only  look  to  see  if  in  the  common  and  the  cheap 
he  discloses  new  values  and  new  meanings,  —  if  his 
leaves  of  grass  have  the  old  freshness  and  nutri 
ment,  and  be  not  a  mere  painted  greenness. 

' '  The  pure  contralto  sings  in  the  organ  loft, 

The  carpenter  dresses  his  plank  —  the  tongue  of  his  foreplane 
whistles  its  wild  ascending  lisp, 

The  married  and  unmarried  children  ride  home  to  their  Thanks 
giving  dinner, 

The  pilot  seizes  the  king-pin  —  he  heaves  down  with  a  strong 
arm, 

The  mate  stands  braced  in  the  whale-boat  —  lance  and  harpoon 
are  ready, 

The  duck-shooter  walks  by  silent  and  cautious  stretches, 

The  deacons  are  ordained  with  crossed  hands  at  the  altar, 

The  spinning-girl  retreats  and  advances  to  the  hum  of  the  big 
wheel, 

The  farmer  stops  by  the  bars,  as  he  walks  on  a  First  Day  loafe, 
and  looks  at  the  oats  and  lye, 

The  lunatic  is  carried  at  last  to  the  asylum,  a  confirmed  case, 

He  will  never  sleep  any  more  as  he  did  in  the  cot  in  his  mother's 
bedroom; 

The  jour  printer  with  gray  head  and  gaunt  jaws  works  at  his 
case, 

He  turns  his  quid  of  tobacco,  while  his  eyes  blurr  with  the  manu 
script; 


HIS  RELATION  TO  ART  AND  LITERATURE      125 

The  malformed  limbs  are  tied  to  the  anatomist's  table, 

What  is  removed  drops  horribly  in  a  pail ; 

The  quadroon  girl  is  sold  at  the  stand  —  the  drunkard  nods  by 

the  bar-room  stove, 
The  machinist  rolls  up  his  sleeves  —  the  policeman  travels  his 

beat  —  the  gate-keeper  marks  who  pass, 
The  young  fellow  drives  the    express-wagon  —  I  love    him, 

though  I  do  not  know  him, 
The  half-breed   straps  on  his  light  boots  to  compete  in  the 

race, 
The  western  turkey-shooting  draws  old  and  young  —  some  lean 

on  their  rifles,  some  sit  on  logs, 
Out  from  the  crowd  steps  the  marksman,  takes  his  position,  levels 

his  piece; 

The  groups  of  newly-come  emigrants  cover  the  wharf  or  levee, 
As  the  woolly-pates  hoe  in  the  sugar-field,  the  overseer  views 

them  from  his  saddle, 
The  bugle  calls  in  the  ball-room,  the  gentlemen  run  for  their 

partners,  the  dancers  bow  to  each  other, 
The  youth  lies  awake  in  the  cedar-roofed  garret,  and  harks  to  the 

musical  rain, 

The  Wolverine  sets  traps  on  the  creek  that  helps  fill  the  Huron, 
The  reformer  ascends  the  platform,  he  spouts  with  his  mouth  and 

nose, 

Seasons  pursuing  each  other,  the  plougher  ploughs,  the  mower 
mows,  and  the  winter-grain  falls  in  the  ground, 

Off  on  the  lakes  the  pike-fisher  watches  and  waits  by  the  hole  in 
the  frozen  surface, 

The  stumps  stand  thick  round  the  clearing,  the  squatter  strikes 
deep  with  his  axe, 

Flatboatmen  make  fast,  towards  dusk,  near  the  cotton-wood  or 
pekan-trees, 

Coon-seekers  go  through  the  regions  of  the  Red  River,  or  through 
those  drained  by  the  Tennessee,  or  through  those  of  the 
Arkansas, 

Torches  shine  in  the  dark  that  hangs  on  the  Chattahooche  or 
Altamahaw, 

Patriarchs  sit  at  supper  with  sons  and  grandsons  and  great-grand 
sons  around  them, 

In  walls  of  adobe,  in  canvas  tents,  rest  hunters  and  trappers  after 
their  day's  sport, 

The  city  sleeps  and  the  country  sleeps, 

The  living  sleep  for  their  time,  the  dead  sleep  for  their  time. 


126  WHITMAN 

The  old  husband  sleeps  by  his  wife,  and  the  young  husband 

sleeps  by  his  wife ; 
And  these  one  and  all  tend  inward  to  me,  and  I  tend  outward  to 

them, 
And  such  as  it  is  to  be  of  these,  more  or  less,  I  am." 

What  is  this  but  tufts  and  tussocks  of  grass ; 
not  branching  trees,  nor  yet  something  framed  and 
deftly  put  together,  but  a  succession  of  simple 
things,  objects,  actions,  persons;  handfuls  of  native 
growths,  a  stretch  of  prairie  or  savanna;  no  compo 
sition,  no  artistic  wholes,  no  logical  sequence,  yet  all 
vital  and  real;  jets  of  warm  life  that  shoot  and  play 
over  the  surface  of  contemporary  America,  and  that 
the  poet  uses  as  the  stuff  out  of  which  to  weave  the 
song  of  himself. 

This  simple  aggregating  or  cataloguing  style  as 
it  has  been  called,  and  which  often  occurs  in  the 
"Leaves,"  has  been  much  criticised,  but  it  seems  to 
me  in  perfect  keeping  in  a  work  that  does  not  aim 
at  total  artistic  effects,  at  finished  structural  perfec 
tion  like  architecture,  but  to  picture  the  elements 
of  a  man's  life  and  character  in  outward  scenes  and 
objects  and  to  show  how  all  nature  tends  inward  to 
him  and  he  outward  to  it.  Whitman  showers  the 
elements  of  American  life  upon  his  reader  until,  so 
to  speak,  his  jnind  is  drenched  with  them,  but  never 
groups  them  into  paffiefns  1)6"  fickle  his  sense  of 
form.  It  is  charged  that  his  method  is  inartistic, 
and  it  is  so  in  a  sense,  but  it  is  the  Whitman  art 
and  has  its  own  value  in  his  work.  Only  the  artist 
instinct  could  prompt  to  this  succession  of  one  line 
genre  word  painting. 


HIS  RELATION   TO   ART   AND  LITERATURE      127 

But  this  is  not  the  way  of  the  great  artists.  No, 
but  it  is  Whitman's  way,  and  these  things  have  a 
certain  artistic  value  in  his  work,  a  work  that  pro 
fessedly  aims  to  typify  his  country  and  times,  —  the 
value  of  multitude,  processions,  mass-movements, 
and  the  gathering  together  of  elements  and  forces 
from  wide  areas. 

XIII 

Whitman's  relation  to  art,  then,  is  primary  and 
fundamental,  just  as  his  relations  to  religion,  to 
culture,  to  politics,  to  democracy,  are  primary  and 
fundamental,  —  through  his  emotion,  his  soul,  and 
not  merely  through  his  tools,  his  intellect.  His 
artistic  conscience  is  quickly  revealed  to  any  search 
ing  inquiry.  It  is  seen  in  his  purpose  to  convey 
his  message  by  suggestion  and  indirection,  or  as  an 
informing,  vitalizing  breath  and  spirit.  His  thought 
and  meaning  are  enveloped  in  his  crowded,  concrete, 
and  often  turbulent-  pages,  as  science  is  enveloped 
in  nature.  He  has  a  profound  ethic,  a  profound 
metaphysic,  but  they  are  not  formulated;  they  are 
vital  in  his  pages  as  hearing  or  eyesight. 

Whitman  studied  effects,  and  shaped  his  means 
to  his  end,  weighing  values  and  subordinating  parts, 
as  only  the  great  artist  does.  He  knew  the  power 
of  words  as  few  know  them;  he  knew  the  value  of 
vista,  perspective,  vanishing  lights  and  lines.  He 
knew  how  to  make  his  words  itch  at  your  ears  till 
you  understood  them ;  how  to  fold  up  and  put  away 
in  his  sentences  meanings,  glimpses,  that  did  not 


128  WHITMAN 

at  first  reveal  themselves.  It  is  only  the  work  of 
the  great  creative  artist  that  is  pervaded  by  will, 
and  that  emanates  directly  and  inevitably  from  the 
personality  of  the  man  himself.  As  a  man  and  an 
American,  Whitman  is  as  closely  related  to  his 
work  as  ^Eschylus  to  his,  or  Dante  to  his.  This  is 
always  a  supreme  test,  —  the  closeness  and  vitality 
of  the  relation  of  a  man  to  his  work.  Could  any 
one  else  have  done  it?  Is  it  the  general  intelli 
gence  that  speaks,  the  culture  and  refinement  of  the 
age?  or  have  we  a  new  revelation  of  life,  a  new 
mind  and  soul?  The  lesser  poets  sustain  only  a 
secondary  relation  to  their  works.  It  is  other  poets, 
other  experiences,  the  past,  the  schools,  the  forms, 
that  speak  through  them.  In  all  Whitman's  reci 
tatives,  as  he  calls  them,  the  free-flowing  ends  of 
the  sentences,  the  loose  threads  of  meaning,  the 
unraveled  or  unknitted  threads  and  fringes,  are  all 
well  considered,  and  are  one  phase  of  his  art.  He 
seeks  his  effects  thus. 

His  method  is  indirect,  allegorical,  and  elliptical 
to  an  unusual  degree;  often  a  curious  suspension 
and  withholding  in  a  statement,  &  suggestive  incom 
pleteness,  both  ends  of  his  thought,  as  it  were,  left 
in  the  air;  sometimes  the  substantive,  sometimes 
the  nominative,  is  wanting,  and  all  for  a  purpose. 
The  poet  somewhere  speaks  of  his  utterance  as 
"prophetic  screams."  The  prophetic  element  is 
rarely  absent,  the  voice  of  one  crying  in  the  wil 
derness,  only  it  is  a  more  jocund  and  reassuring 
cry  than  we  are  used  to  in  prophecy.  The  forth- 


HIS  KELATION   TO   ART   AND  LITERATURE      129 

Tightness  of  utterance,  the  projectile  force  of  ex 
pression,  the  constant  appeal  to  unseen  laws  and 
powers  of  the  great  prophetic  souls,  is  here. 

Whitman  is  poetic  in  the  same  way  in  which 
he  is  democratic,  in  the  same  way  in  which  he  is 
religious,  or  American,  or  modern,  — not  by  word 
merely,  but  by  deed;  not  by  the  extrinsic,  but  by 
the  intrinsic ;  not  by  art,  but  by  life. 

I  am  never  tired  of  saying  that  to  put  great  per-  [ 
sonal  qualities  in  a  poem,  or  other  literary  work,  not 
formulated  or  didactically  stated,  but  in  tone,  man 
ner,  attitude,  breadth  of  view,  love,  charity,  good 
fellowship,  etc.,  is  the  great  triumph  for  our  day. 
So  put,  they  are  a  possession  to  the  race  forever; 
they  grow  and  bear  fruit  perennially,  like  the  grass 
and  the  trees.  And  shall  it  be  said  that  the  poet 
who  does  this  has  no  worthy  art? 

XIV 

Nearly  all  modern  artificial  products,  when  com 
pared  with  the  ancient,  are  characterized  by  greater 
mechanical  finish  and  precision.  Can  we  say,  there 
fore,  they  are  more  artistic  ?  Is  a  gold  coin  of  the 
time  of  Pericles,  so  rude  and  simple,  less  artistic 
than  the  elaborate  coins  of  our  own  day  ?  Is  Jap 
anese  pottery,  the  glazing  often  ragged  and  uneven, 
less  artistic  than  the  highly  finished  work  of  the 
moderns  ? 

Are  we  quite  sure,  after  all,  that  what  we  call 
"  artistic  form  "  is  in  any  high  or  fundamental  sense 
artistic?  Are  the  precise,  the  regular,  the  meas- 


130  WHITMAN 

ured,  the  finished,  the  symmetrical,  indispensable  to 
our  conception  of  art  1  \  If  regular  extrinsic  form  and 
measure  and  proportion  are  necessary  elements  of 
the  artistic,  then  geometrical  flower-beds,  and  trees 
set  in  rows  or  trained  to  some  fancy  pattern,  ought 
to  please  the  artist.  But  do  they  ?  If  we  look 
for  the  artistic  in  these  things,  then  Addison  is  a 
greater  artist  than  Shakespeare.  Dr.  Johnson  says, 
"Addison  speaks  the  language  of  poets,  and  Shake 
speare  of  men.7'  Which  is  really  the  most  artistic1? 
The  one  is  the  coin  from  the  die,  the  other  the  coin 
from  the  hand. 

Tennyson's  faultless  form  and  finish  are  not  what 
stamp  him  a  great  artist.  He  would  no  doubt  be 
glad  to  get  rid  of  them  if  he  could,  at  least  to  keep 
them  in  abeyance  and  make  them  less  obtrusive; 
he  would  give  anything  for  the  freedom,  raciness, 
and  wildness  of  Shakespeare.  But  he  is  not  equal 
to  these  things.  The  culture,  the  refinement,  the 
precision  of  a  correct  and  mechanical  age  have  sunk 
too  deeply  into  his  soul.  He  has  not  the  courage 
or  the  spring  to  let  himself  go  as  Shakespeare  did. 
Tennyson,  too,  speaks  the  language  of  poets,  and 
not  of  men ;  he  savors  of  the  flower  -  garden,  and 
not  of  the  forest.  Tennyson  knows  that  he  is  an 
artist.  Shakespeare,  apparently,  never  had  such  a 
thought ;  he  is  intent  solely  upon  holding  the  mirror 
up  to  nature.  The  former  lived  in  an  age  of  criti 
cism,  and  when  the  poets  loved  poetry  more  than 
they  did  life  and  things ;  the  latter,  in  a  more  virile 
time,  and  in  "the  full  stream  of  the  world." 


HIS   RELATION  TO  ART  AND   LITERATURE      131 

"Leaves  of  Grass"  is  not  self-advertised  as  a 
work  of  art.  The  author  had  no  thought  that  you 
should  lay  down  his  book  and  say,  "What  a  great 
artist!"  "What  a  master  workman !"  He  would 
rather  you  should  say,  "  What  a  great  man !  "  "  What 
a  loving  comrade !  "  "  What  a  real  democrat !  "  "  What 
a  healing  and  helpful  force !  "  He  would  not  have 
you  admire  his  poetry:  he  would  have  you  filled  * 
with  the  breath  of  a  new  and  larger  and  saner  life ; 
he  would  be  a  teacher  and  trainer  of  men. 

The  love  of  the  precise,  the  exact,  the  methodical,  \ 
is  characteristic  of  an  age  of  machinery,  of  a  commer-  \ 
cial  and  industrial  age  like  ours.  These  things  are 
indispensable  in  the  mill  and  counting-house,  but 
why  should  we  insist  upon  them  in  poetry  1  Why 
should  we  cling  to  an  arbitrary  form  like  the  sonnet  ? 
Why  should  we  insist  upon  a  perfect  rhyme,  as  if  it 
was  a  cog  in  a  wheel  1  Why  not  allow  and  even 
welcome  the  freedom  of  half-rhymes,  or  suggestive 
rhymes  ?  Why,  anyway,  fold  back  a  sentence  or  idea 
to  get  it  into  a  prescribed  arbitrary  form?  Why/j 
should  we  call  this  verse- tinkering  and  verse-shaping*  I 
art,  when  it  is  only  artifice?  Why  should  we  call 
the  man  who  makes  one  pretty  conceit  rhyme  with 
another  pretty  conceit  an  artist,  and  deny  the  term 
to  the  man  whose  sentences  pair  with  great  laws 
and  forces  ? 

Of  course  it  is  much  easier  for  a  poet  to  use  the 
regular  verse-forms  and  verse  language  than  it  is  to 
dispense  with  them;  that  is,  a  much  less  poetic 
capital  is  required  in  the  former  case  than  in  the 


132  WHITMAN 

latter.  The  stock  forms  and  the  stock  language 
count  for  a  good  deal.  A  very  small  amount  of 
original  talent  may  cut  quite  an  imposing  figure  in 
the  robes  of  the  great  masters.  Require  the  poet 
to  divest  himself  of  them,  and  to  speak  in  the  lan 
guage  of  men  and  in  the  spirit  of  real  things,  and 
see  how  he  fares. 

xv 

Whitman  was  afraid  of  what  he  called  the  beauty 
disease.  He  thought  a  poet  of  the  first  order  should 
be  sparing  of  the  direct  use  of  the  beautiful,  as 
Nature  herself  is.  His  aim  should  be  larger,  and 
beauty  should  follow  and  not  lead.  The  poet 
should  not  say  to  himself,  "Come,  I  will  make 
something  beautiful,"  but  rather  "I  will  make  some- 
thingjtrue,  and  quickening,  and  powerful.  I  will 
not  dress  my  verse  up  in  fine  words  and  pretty  fan 
cies,  but  I  will  breathe  into  it  the  grit  and  force 
and  adhesiveness  of  real  things."  Beauty  is  the 
flowering  of  life  and  fecundity,  and  it  must  have 
deep  root  in  the  non-beautiful. 
*"  Beauty,  as  the  master  knows  it,  is  a  spirit  and 
not  an  adornment.  It  is  not  merely  akin  to  flow 
ers  and  gems  and  rainbows  :  it  is  akin  to  the  All. 
Looking  through  his  eyes,  you  shall  see  it  in^the 
rude  and  the  savage  also,  in  rocks  and  deserts  and 
mountains,  in  the  common  as  well  as  in  the  rare, 
in  wrinkled  age  as  well  as  in  rosy  youth. 

The  non-beautiful  holds  the  world  together,  holds 
life  together  and  nourishes  it,  more  than  the  beau- 


HIS  RELATION   TO  ART  AND  LITERATURE      133 

tiful.      Nature  is  beautiful  because  she  is  so  much 
else  first,  —  yes,  and  last,  and  all  the  time. 

"  For  the  roughness  of  the  earth  and  of  man  encloses  as  much  as 

the  delicates  of  the  earth  and  of  man, 
And  nothing  endures  but  personal  qualities." 

Is  there  not  in  field,  wood,  or  shore  something 
more  precious  and  tonic  than  any  special  beauties 
we  may  chance  to  find  there,  —  flowers,  perfumes, 
sunsets,  —  something  that  we  cannot  do  without, 
though  we  can  do  without  these  ?  Is  it  health,  life, 
power,  or  what  is  it  ? 

Whatever  it  is,  it  is  something  analogous  to  this 
that  we  get  in  Whitman.  There  is  little  in  his 
"  Leaves "  that  one  would  care  to  quote  for  its 
mere  beauty,  though  this  element  is  there  also.  One 
may  pluck  a  flower  here  and  there  in  his  rugged 
landscape,  as  in  any  other;  but  the  flowers  are 
always  by  the  way,  and  never  the  main  matter. 
We  should  not  miss  them  if  they  were  not  there. 
What  delights  and  invigorates  us  is  in  the  air,  and 
in  the  look  of  things.  The  flowers  are  like  our 
wild  blossoms  growing  under  great  trees  or  amid 
rocks,  never  the  camellia  or  tuberose  of  the  garden 
or  hot-house,  —  something  rude  and  bracing  is  al 
ways  present,  always  a  breath  of  the  untamed  and 
aboriginal. 

Whitman's  work  gives  results,  and  never  pro 
cesses.  There  is  no  return  of  the  mind  upon  itself; 
it  descends  constantly  upon  things,  persons,  reali 
ties.  It  is  a  rushing  stream  which  will  not  stop 
to  be  analyzed.  It  has  been  urged  that  Whitman 


134  WHITMAN 

does  not  give  the  purely  intellectual  satisfaction 
that  would  seem  to  be  warranted  by  his  mental 
grasp  and  penetration.  No,  nor  the  aesthetic  satis 
faction  warranted  by  his  essentially  artistic  habit 
of  mind.  Well,  he  did  not  promise  satisfaction  in 
anything,  but  only  to  put  us  on  the  road  to  satisfac 
tion.  His  book,  he  says,  is  not  a  "good  lesson," 
but  it  lets  down  the  bars  to  a  good  lesson,  and  that 
to  another,  and  every  one  to  another  still. 

Let  me  repeat  that  the  sharp,  distinct  intellectual 
note  —  the  note  of  culture,  books,  clubs,  etc.,  such 
as  we  get  from  so  many  modern  writers,  you  will 
not  get  from  Whitman.  In  my  opinion,  the  note 
he  sounds  is  deeper  and  better  than  that.  It  has 
been  charged  by  an  unfriendly  critic  that  he  strikes 
lower  than  the  intellect.  If  it  is  meant  by  this 
I  -  that  he  misses  the  intellect,  it  is  not  true ;  hejstim- 
ulates  the  intellect  as  few  poets  do.  He  strikes 
Slower  because  he  strikes  farther.  He  sounds-4he 
^  note  of  character,  personality,  volition,  the  note  of 
prophecy,  of  democracy,  and  of  love,  v  He  seems 
unintellectual  to  an  abnormally  intellectual  age ;  he 
seems  unpoetic  to  a  taste  formed  upon  poetic  tidbits ; 
he  seems  irreligious  to  standards  founded  upon  the 
old  models  of  devotional  piety ;  he  seems  disorderly, 
incoherent  to  all  petty  thumb  and  finger  measure 
ments.  In  his  ideas  and  convictions,  Whitman  was 
a  modern  of  the  moderns ;  yet  in  his  type,  his  tastes, 
his  fundamental  make-up,  he  was  primitive,  of  an 
earlier  race  and  age,  —  before,  as  Emerson  suggests, 
the  gods  had  cut  Man  up  into  men,  with  special 
talents  of  one  kind  or  another.  J 


HIS  EELATION  TO  ART  AND  LITERATURE      135 


XVI 

Take  any  of  Whitman's  irregular-flowing  lines, 
and  clip  and  trim  them,  and  compress  them  into 
artificial  verse-forms,  and  what  have  we  gained  to 
make  up  for  what  we  have  lost?  Take  his  lines 
called  " Reconciliation, "  for  instance:  — 

"  Word  over  all  beautiful  as  the  sky, 

Beautiful  that  war  and  all  its  deeds  of  carnage  must  in  time  be 

utterly  lost, 
That  the  hands  of  the  sisters  Death  and  Night  incessantly  softly 

wash  again,  and  ever  again,  this  soil'd  world  ; 
For  my  enemy  is  dead,  a  man  divine  as  myself  is  dead, 
I  look  where  he  lies  white-faced  and  still  in  the  coffin  —  I  draw 

near, 
Bend  down,  and  touch  lightly  with  my  lips  the  white  face  in  the 

coffin." 

Or  take  his  poem  called  "  Old  Ireland :  " — 

"  Far  hence  amid  an  isle  of  wondrous  beauty, 

Crouching  over  a  grave  an  ancient  sorrowful  mother, 

Once  a  queen,  now  lean  and  tatter' d,  seated  on  the  ground, 

Her  old  white  hair  drooping,  dishevel'd,  round  her  shoulders, 

At  her  feet  fallen  an  unused  royal  harp, 

Long  silent,  she,  too,  long  silent,  mourning  her  shrouded  hope 

and  heir*,- 
Of  all  the  earth  her  heart  most  full  of  sorrow  because  most  full 

of  love. 

"  Yet  a  word,  ancient  mother, 

You  need  crouch  there  no  longer  on  the  cold  ground  with  fore 
head  between  your  knees, 

Oh,  you  need  not  sit  there  veil'd  in  your  old  white  hair  so  dis 
hevel'd, 

For  know  you  the  one  you  mourn  is  not  in  that  grave, 
It  was  an  illusion  ;  the  son  you  loved  was  not  really  dead, 
The  Lord  is  not  dead,  he  is  risen  again  young  and  strong  in  an 
other  country. 

Even  while  you  wept  there  by  your  fallen  harp  by  the  grave, 
What  you  wept  for  was  translated,  pass'd  from  the  grave, 


136  WHITMAN 

The  winds  favor'd  and  the  sea  sail'd  it, 
And  now  with  rosy  and  new  blood, 
Moves  to-day  in  a  new  country." 

Or  take  these  lines  from  "  Children  of  Adam :  "  — 

"  I  heard  you  solemn-sweet  pipes  of  the  organ  as  last  Sunday 

morn  I  pass'd  the  church, 
Winds  of  autumn,  as  I  walk'd  the  woods  at  dusk  I  heard  vour 

long-stretch' d  sighs  up  above  so  mournful, 
I  heard  the  perfect  Italian  tenor  singing  at  the  opera.  I  heard  the 

soprano  in  the  midst  of  the  quartet  singing  ; 
Heart  of  my  love  !  you,  too,  I  heard  murmuring  low  through  one 

of  the  wrists  around  my  head, 
Heard  the  pulse  of  you,  when  all  was  still,  ringing  little  bells  last 

night  under  my  ear." 

Put  such  things  as  these,  or  in  fact  any  of  the 
poems,  in  rhymed  and  measured  verse,  and  you 
heighten  a  certain  effect,  the  effect  of  the  highly 
wrought,  the  cunningly  devised;  but  we  lose  just 
what  the  poet  wanted  to  preserve  at  all  hazards,  — 
jdsta,  unconstraint,  the  effect  of  the  free-careering 
forces  of  nature. 

I  always  think  of  a  regulation  verse-form  as  a 
kind  of  corset  which  does  not  much  disguise  a  good 
figure,  though  it  certainly  hampers  it,  and  which  is 
a  great  help  to  a  poor  figure.  It  covers  up  defi 
ciencies,  and  it  restrains  exuberances.  A  personality 
like  Whitman  can  wear  it  with  ease  and  grace,  as 
may  be  seen  in  a  few  of  his  minor  poems,  but  for 
my  part  I  like  him  best  without  it. 

XVII 

How  well  we  know  the  language  of  the  conven 
tional  poetic!  In  this  language,  the  language  of 
nine  tenths  of  current  poetry,  the  wind  comes  up 


HIS  RELATION  TO  ART  AND  LITERATURE      137 

out  of  the  south  and  kisses  the  rose's  crimson 
mouth,  or  it  comes  out  of  the  wood  and  rumples 
the  poppy's  hood.  Morning  comes  in  glistening 
sandals,  and  her  footsteps  are  jeweled  with  flowers. 
Everything  is  bedecked  and  bejeweled.  Nothing  / 
is  truly  seen  or  truly  reported.  It  is  an  attempt 
to  paint  the  world  beautiful.  It  is  not  beautiful  as 
it  is,  and  we  must  deck  it  out  in  the  colors  of  the 
fancy.  Now,  I  do  not  want  the  world  painted  for 
me.  I  want  the  grass  green  or  brown,  as  the  case 
may  be;  the  sky  blue,  the  rocks  gray,  the  soil  red; 
and  that  the  sun  should  rise  and  set  without  any 
poetic  claptrap.  What  I  want  is  to  see  these  thingsjf 
spin  around  a  thought,  or  float  on  the  current  off 
an  emotion,  as  they  always  do  in  real  poetry. 

Beauty    always   follows,    never    leads    the    great  j 
poet.      It  arises  out  of  the  interior  substance  andl 
structure  of  his  work,  like  the  bloom  of  health  in 
the  cheeks.     The  young  poet  thinks  to  win  Beauty 
by  direct  and  persistent  wooing  of  her.      He  has  not  i 
learned  yet  that  she  comes  unsought  to  the  truthful,  | 
the  brave,  the  heroic.      Let  him  think  some  great 
thought,  experience  some  noble  impulse,  give  him 
self  with  love   to   life   and   reality  about  him,  and 
Beauty  is  already  his.      She  is  the  reward  of  noble 
deeds. 

XVIII 

The  modern  standard  in  art  is  becoming  more 
and  more  what  has.  been  called  the  canon  of  the 
characteristic,  as  distinguished  from  the  Greek  or 
classic  canon  of  formal  beauty.  It  is  this  canon,  as 


138  WHITMAN 

Professor  Triggs  suggests,  that  we  are  to  apply  to 
Whitman.  Dr.  Johnson  had  it  in  mind  when  he 
wrote  thus  of  Shakespeare :  — 

"The  work  of  a  correct  and  regular  writer  is  a 
garden  accurately  formed  and  diligently  planted, 
varied  with  shades  and  scented  with  flowers:  the 
composition  of  Shakespeare  is  a  forest  in  which 
oaks  extend  their  branches,  and  pines  tower  in  the 
air,  interspersed  sometimes  with  weeds  and  bram 
bles,  and  sometimes  giving  shelter  to  myrtles  and  to 
roses ;  filling  the  eye  with  awful  pomp,  and  gratify 
ing  the  mind  with  endless  diversity." 

Classic  art  holds  to  certain  fixed  standards;  it 
seeks  formal  beauty ;  it  holds  to  order  and  propor 
tion  in  external  parts;  its  ideal  of  natural  beauty  is 
the  well-ordered  park  or  grove  or  flower-garden.  It 
has  a  horror  of  the  wild  and  savage.  Mountains 
and  forests,  and  tempests  and  seas,  filled  the  classic 
mind  with  terror.  Not  so  with  the  modern  roman 
tic  mind,  which  finds  its  best  stimulus  and  delight 
in  free,  unhampered  nature.  It  loves  the  element  of 
mystery  and  the  suggestion  of  uncontrollable  power. 
The  modern  mind  has  a  sense  of  the  vast,  the  infi 
nite,  that  the  Greek  had  not,  and  it  is  drawn  by 
informal  beauty  more  than  by  the  formal. 

XIX 

It  is  urged  against  Whitman  that  he  brings  us 
the  materials  of  poetry,  but  not  poetry:  he  brings 
us  the  marble  block,  but  not  the  statue;  or  he 
brings  us  the  brick  and  mortar,  but  not  the  house. 


HIS   RELATION  TO  AET  AND  LITERATURE      139 

False  or  superficial  analogies  mislead  us.  Poetry  \ 
is  not  something  made ;  it  is  something._grown,  it  1 
is  a  vital  union  of  the  fact  and  the  spirit.  If  the 
verse  awakens  in  us  the  poetic  thrill,  the  material, 
whatever  it  be,  must  have  been  touched  with  the 
transforming  spirit  of  poesy.  Why  does  Whitman's 
material  suggest  to  any  reader  that  it  is  poetic  ma 
terial  ?  Because  it  has  already  been  breathed  upon 
by  the  poetic  spirit.  A  poet  may  bring  the  raw 
material  of  poetry  in  the  sense  that  he  may  bring 
the  raw  material  of  a  gold  coin;  the  stamp  and 
form  you  give  it  does  not  add  to  its  value.  It  is 
doubtful  if  any  of  Whitman's  utterances  could  be 
worked  up  into  what  is  called  poetry  without  a  dis 
tinct  loss  of  poetic  value.  What  they  would  gain  S 
in  finish  they  would  lose  in  suggestiveness.  This 
word  "  suggestiveness "  affords  one  of  the  keys  toS  V 
Whitman.  The  objection  to  him  I  have  been  con 
sidering  arises  from  the  failure  of  the  critic  to  see 
and  appreciate  his  avowed  purpose  to  make  his 
page  fruitful  in  poetic  suggestion,  rather  than  in 
samples  of  poetic  elaboration.  "I  finish  no  speci 
mens,"  he  says.  "I  shower  them  by  exhaustless 
laws,  fresh  and  modern  continually,  as  Nature  does. " 
He  is  quite  content  if  he  awaken  the  poetic  emo 
tion  without  at  all  satisfying  it.  He  would  have 
you  more  eager  and  hungry  for  poetry  when  you 
had  finished  with  him  than  when  you  began.  He 
brings  the  poetic  stimulus,  and  brings  it  in  fuller 
measure  than  any  contemporary  poet;  and  this  is 
enough  for  him. 


140  WHITMAN 

An  eminent  musician  and  composer,  the  late  Dr. 
Bitter,  told  me  that  reading  "Leaves  of  Grass" 
excited  him  to  composition  as  no  other  poetry  did. 
Tennyson  left  him  passive  and  cold,  but  Whitman 
set  his  fingers  in  motion  at  once ;  he  was  so  fruit 
ful  in  themes,  so  suggestive  of  new  harmonies  and 
melodies.  He  gave  the  hints,  and  left  his  reader 
to  follow  them  up.  This  is  exactly  what  Whit 
man  wanted  to  do.  It  defines  his  attitude  toward 
poetry,  towards  philosophy,  towards  religion,  —  to 
suggest  and  set  going,  to  arouse  unanswerable  ques 
tions,  and  to  brace  you  to  meet  them ;  to  bring  the 
materials  of  poetry,  if  you  will  have  it  so,  and  leave 
you  to  make  the  poem;  to  start  trains  of  thought, 
and  leave  you  to  pursue  the  flight  alone.  Not  a 
thinker,  several  critics  have  urged;  no,  but  the 
cause  of  thought  in  others  to  an  unwonted  degree. 
"Whether  you  agree  with  him  or  not,7'  says  an 
Australian  essayist,  "  he  will  sting  you  into  such  an 
anguish  of  thought  as  must  in  the  end  be  bene 
ficial."  It  matters  little  to  him  whether  or  not 
you  agree  with  him;  what  is  important  is,  that 
you  should  think  the  matter  out  for  yourself.  He 
purposely  avoids  hemming  you  in  by  his  conclu 
sions;  he  would  lead  you  in  no  direction  but  your 
own.  "Once  more  I  charge  you  give  play  to  your 
self.  I  charge  you  leave  all  free,  as  I  have  left  all 
free." 

No  thought,  no  philosophy,  no  music,  no  poetry, 
-in  his  pages;  no,  it  is  all  character,  impulse,  emo 
tion,  suggestion.  But  the  true  reader  of  him  expe- 


HIS  KELATION   TO  ART  AND  LITERATURE      141 

riences  all  these  things:  he  finds  in  his  pages,  if  he 
knows  how  to  look  for  it,  a  profound  metaphysic, 
a  profound  ethic,  a  profound  aesthetic;  a  theory 
of  art  and  poetry  which  is  never  stated,  but  only 
hinted  or  suggested,  and  which  is  much  more  robust 
and  vital  than  what  we  are  used  to;  a  theory  of 
good  and  evil;  a  view  of  character  and  conduct;  a 
theory  of  the  state  and  of  politics,  of  the  relation 
of  the  sexes,  etc.,  to  give  ample  food  for  thought 
and  speculation.  The  Hegelian  philosophy  is  in  the 
"  Leaves  "  as  vital  as  the  red  corpuscles  in  the  blood, 
so  much  is  implied  that  is  not  stated,  but  only  sug 
gested,  as  in  Nature  herself.  The  really  vast  erudi 
tion  of  the  work  is  adroitly  concealed,  hidden  like 
its  philosophy,  as  a  tree  hides  its  roots.  -Readers 
should  not  need  to  be  told  that,  in  the  region  of  art 
as  of  religion,  mentality  is  not  first,  but  spirituality, 
personality,  imagination ;  and  that  we  do  not  expect 
a  poet's  thoughts  to  lie  upon  his  pages  like  boulders 
in  the  field,  but  rather  to  show  their  presence  like 
elements  in  the  soil. 

"Love-buds,  put  before  you  and  within  you,  whoever  you  are, 

Buds  to  be  unfolded  on  the  old  terms, 

If  you  bring  the  warmth  of  the  sun  to  them,  they  will  open,  and 

bring  form,  color,  perfume  to  you, 
If  you  become  the  aliment  and  the  wet,  they  will  become  flowers, 

fruits,  tall  branches  and  trees." 

The  early  records  and  sacred  books  of  most  peo 
ples  contain  what  is  called  the  materials  of  poetry. 
The  Bible  is  full  of  such  materials.  English  litera 
ture  shows  many  attempts  to  work  this  material  up 
into  poetry,  but  always  with  a  distinct  loss  of  poetic 


142  WHITMAN 

value.  The  gold  is  simply  beaten  out  thin  and 
made  to  cover  more  surface,  or  it  is  mixed  with 
some  base  metal.  A  recent  English  poet  has  at 
tempted  to  work  up  the  New  Testament  records' 
into  poetry,  and  the  result  is  for  the  most  part  a 
thin,  windy  dilution  of  the  original.  If  the  record 
or  legend  is  full  of  poetic  suggestion,  that  is  enough ; 
to  elaborate  it,  and  deck  it  out  in  poetic  finery  with 
out  loss  of  poetic  value,  is  next  to  impossible. 

To  me  the  Arthurian  legends  as  they  are  given  in 
the  old  books,  are  more  poetic,  more  stimulating  to 
the  imagination,  than  they  are  after  they  have  gone 
through  the  verbal  upholstering  and  polishing  of 
such  a  poet  as  Swinburne  or  even  Tennyson.  These 
poets  add  little  but  words  and  flowers  of  fancy,  and 
the  heroic  simplicity  of  the  original  is  quite  de 
stroyed. 

xx 

No  critic  of  repute  has  been  more  puzzled  and 
misled  by  this  unwrought  character  of  our  poet's 
verse  than  Mr.  Edmund  Gosse,  the  London  poet  and 
essayist.  Mr.  Gosse  finds  Whitman  only  a  potential 
or  possible  poet;  his  work  is  literature  in  the  con 
dition  of  protoplasm.  He  is  a  maker  of  poems  in 
solution  ;  the  structural  change  which  should  have 
crystallized  his  fluid  and  teeming  pages  into  forms 
of  art  never  came.  It  does  not  occur  to  Mr.  Gosse 
to  inquire  whether  or  not  something  like  this  may 
not  have  been  the  poet's  intention.  Perhaps  this  is 
the  secret  of  the  vitality  of  his  work,  which,  as  Mr. 


HIS  RELATION  TO  ART  AND   LITERATURE      143 

Gosse  says,  now,  after  forty  years,  shows  no  sign  of 
declining.  Perhaps  it  was  a  large,  fresh  supply  of 
poetic  yeast  that  the  poet  really  sought  to  bring  us. 
Undoubtedly  Whitman  aimed  to  give  his  work  just 
this  fluid,  generative  quality,  to  put  into  it  the  very 
basic  elements  of  life  itself.  He  feared  the  "struc 
tural  change  "  to  which  Mr.  Gosse  refers ;  he  knew 
it  was  more  or  less  a  change  from  life  to  death:  the 
cell  and  not  the  crystal;  the  leaf  of  grass,  and  not 
the  gem,  is  the  type  of  his  sentences.  He  sacrificed 
fixed  form ;  above  all,  did  he  stop  short  of  that  con 
scious  intellectual  elaboration  so  characteristic  of 
later  poetry,  the  better  to  give  the  impression  and 
the  stimulus  of  creative  elemental  power.  It  is  not 
to  the  point  to  urge  that  this  is  not  the  method  or 
aim  of  other  poets;  that  others  have  used  the  fixed 
forms,  and  found  them  plastic  and  vital  in  their 
hands.  It  was  Whitman's  aim;  these  were  the 
effects  he  sought.  I  think  beyond  doubt  that  he 
gives  us  the  impression  of  something  dynamic,  some^\ 
thing  akin  to  the  vital  forces  of  the  organic  worJ&J 
much  more  distinctly  and  fully  than  any  other  poet 
who  has  lived. 

Whitman  always  aimed   to  make  his  reader  an 
active   partner  with  him   in  his  poetic   enterprise. 
"I   seek   less,"  he   says,    "to  state  or  display  any] 
theme  or  thought,  and  more  to  bring  you,  reader, 
into    the    atmosphere     of    the    theme    or   thought,   ! 
there  to    pursue  your  own   flight."     This   trait    18"- ' 
brought    out   by    Mr.    Gosse    in    a    little    allegory. 
"Every  reader  who  comes  to  Whitman,"  he  says, 


144  WHITMAN 

"starts  upon  an  expedition  to  the  virgin  forest. 
He  must  take  his  conveniences  with  him.  He  will 
make  of  the  excursion  what  his  own  spirit  dictates. 
[We  generally  do,  in  such  cases,  Mr.  Gosse.] 
There  are  solitudes,  fresh  air,  rough  landscape,  and 
a  well  of  water,  but  if  he  wishes  to  enjoy  the  latter 
he  must  bring  his  own  cup  with  him."  This  phase 
of  Whitman's  work  has  never  been  more  clearly 
defined.  Mr.  Gosse  utters  it  as  an  adverse  criti 
cism.  It  is  true  exposition,  however  we  take  it, 
what  we  get  out  of  Whitman  depends  so  largely 
upon  what  we  bring  to  him.  Readers  will  not  all 
get  the  same.  We  do  not  all  get  the  same  out  of 
a  walk  or  a  mountain  climb.  We  get  out  of  him 
in  proportion  to  the  sympathetic  and  interpretative 
power  of  our  own  spirits.  Have  you  the  brood 
ing,  warming,  vivifying  mother-mind  ?  That  vague, 
elusive,  incommensurable  something  in  the  "  Leaves  " 
that  led  Symonds  to  say  that  talking  about  Whitman 
was  like  talking  about  the  universe,  —  that  seems 
to  challenge  our  pursuit  and  definition,  that  takes 
on  so  many  different  aspects  to  so  many  different 
minds,  —  it  seems  to  be  this  that  has  led  Mr.  Gosse 
to  persuade  himself  that  there  is  no  real  Walt 
Whitman,  no  man  whom  we  can  take,  as  we  take 
any  other  figure  in  literature,  as  an  "entity  of  posi 
tive  value  and  definite  characteristics,'7  but  a  mere 
mass  of  literary  protoplasm  that  takes  the  instant 
impression  of  whatever  mood  approaches  it.  Ste 
venson  finds  a  Stevenson  in  it,  Mr.  Symonds  finds  a 
Symonds,  Emerson  finds  an  Emerson,  etc.  Truly 


HIS   RELATION   TO   ART   AND  LITERATURE      145 

may  our  poet  say,  "I  contain  multitudes."  In 
what  other  poet  do  these  men,  or  others  like  them, 
find  themselves? 

Whitman  was  a  powerful  solvent  undoubtedly. 
He  never  hardens  into  anything  like  a  system,  or 
into  mere  intellectual  propositions.  One  of  his 
own  phrases,  "the  fluid  and  swallowing  soul,"  is 
descriptive  of  this  trait  of  him.  One  source  of  his 
charm  is,  that  we  each  see  some  phase  of  ourselves 
in  him,  as  Mr.  Gosse  suggests.  Above  all  things 
is  he  potential  and  indicative,  bard  of  "flowing 
mouth  and  indicative  hand.'"  In  his  "Inscrip 
tions  "  he  says :  — 
"  I  am  a  man  who,  sauntering  along  without  fully  stopping,  turns 

a  casual  look  upon  you  and  then  averts  his  face, 
Leaving  it  to  you  to  prove  and  define  it, 
Expecting  the  main  things  from  you." 

This  withholding  and  half-averted  glancing,  then, 
on  the  part  of  the  poet,  is  deliberate  and  enters 
into  the  scheme  of  the  work.  Mr.  Gosse  would 
have  shown  himself  a  sounder  critic  had  he  pene 
trated  the  poet's  purpose  in  this  respect,  and  shown 
whether  or  not  he  had  violated  the  canons  he  had 
set  up  for  his  own  guidance.  We  do  not  con 
demn  a  creative  work  when  it  departs  from  some 
rule  or  precedent,  but  when  it  violates  its  own  prin 
ciple,  when  it  is  not  consistent  with  itself,  when 
it  hath  not  eyes  to  see,  or  ears  to  hear,  or  hands 
to  reach  what  lies  within  its  own  sphere.  Art,  in 
the  plastic  realms  of  written  language,  may  set  its 
mind  upon  elaboration,  upon  structural  finish  and 
proportion,  upon  exact  forms  and  compensations,  as 


146  WHITMAN 

in  architecture,  or  it  may  set  its  mind  upon  sugges 
tion,  indirection,  and  the  flowing,  changing  forms 
of  organic  nature.  It  is  as  much  art  in  the  one 
case  as  in  the  other.  To  get  rid  of  all  visible  arti 
fice  is,  of  course,  the  great  thing  in  both  cases. 
1  There  is  so  little  apparent  artifice  in  Whitman's 
case  that  he  has  been  accused  of  being  entirely 
without  art,  and  of  throwing  his  matter  together  in 
a  haphazard  way,  —  "  without  thought,  without  se 
lection,"  without  "composition,  evolution,  verte- 
bration  of  style,"  says  Mr.  Gosse.  Yet  his  work 
more  than  holds  its  own  in  a  field  where  these 
things  alone  are  supposed  to  insure  success.  Whit 
man  covers  up  his  processes  well,  and  knows  how 
to  hit  his  mark  without  seeming  to  take  aim.  The 
verdicts  upon  him  are  mainly  contradictory,  because 
each  critic  only  takes  in  a  part  of  his  scheme.  Mr. 
Stedman  finds  him  a  formalist.  Mr.  Gosse  finds  in 
him  a  negation  of  all  form.  The  London  critic  says 
he  is  without  thought.  A  Boston  critic  speaks  of 
what  he  happily  calls  the  "waves  of  thought"  in 
his  work,  —  vast  mind-impulses  that  lift  and  sway 
great  masses  of  concrete  facts  and  incidents.  Whit 
man  knew  from  the  start  that  he  would  puzzle  and 
baffle  his  critics,  and  would  escape  from  them  like 
air  when  they  felt  most  sure  they  had  him  in  their 
verbal  nets.  So  it  has  been  from  the  first,  and  so 
it  continues  to  be.  Without  one  thing,  he  says,  it 
is  useless  to  read  him;  and  of  what  that  one  thing 
needful  is,  he  gives  only  the  vaguest  hint,  only  a 
"significant  look." 


HIS   RELATKTO  ARAD  LITRATURE      147 


XXI 

I  may  here  notice  two  objections  to  Whitman 
urged  by  Mr.  Stedman,  —  a  critic  for  whose  opinion 
I  have  great  respect,  and  a  man  for  whom  I  have  a 
genuine  affection.  With  all  his  boasted  breadth  and 
tolerance,  Whitman,  says  my  friend,  is  narrow ;  and, 
with  all  his  vaunted  escape  from  the  shackles  of 
verse-form,  he  is  a  formalist:  his  "irregular,  man- 
neristic  chant "  is  as  much  at  the  extreme  of  artifi 
ciality  as  is  the  sonnet.  These  certainly  are  faults 
that  one  does  not  readily  associate  with  the  work 
of  Whitman.  But  then  I  remember  that  the  French 
critic,  Scherer,  charges  Carlyle,  the  apostle  of  the 
gospel  of  sincerity,  with  being  insincere  and  guilty 
of  canting  about  cant.  If  Carlyle  is  insincere,  I 
think  it  very  likely  that  Whitman  may  be  narrow 
and  hide  -  bound.  These  things  are  so  much  a 
matter  of  temperament  that  one  cannot  judge  for 
another.  Yet  one  ought  not  to  confound  narrow 
ness  and  breadth,  or  little  and  big.  All  earnest, 
uncompromising  men  are  more  or  less  open  to  the 
charge  of  narrowness.  A  man  is  narrow  when  he 
concentrates  himself  upon  a  point ;  %even  a  cannon- 
shot  is.  Whitman  was  narrow  in  the  sense  that  he 
was  at  times  monotonous;  that  he  sought  but  few 
effects,  that  he  poured  himself  out  mainly  in  one 
channel,  that  he  struck  chiefly  the  major  chords  of 
life.  His  "  Leaves  "  do  not  show  a  great  range  of 
artistic  metifs.  A  versatile,  many-sided  nature  he 
certainly  was  not;  a  large,  broad,  tolerant  nature  he 


148  WHITMAN 

as  certainly  was.  He  does  not  assume  many  and 
diverse  forms  like  a  purely  artistic  talent,  sporting 
with  and  masquerading  in  all  the  elements  of  life, 
like  Shakespeare;  but  in  his  own  proper  form,  and 
in  his  own  proper  person,  he  gives  a  sense  of  vast- 
ness  and  power  that  are  unapproached  in  modern 
literature.  He  asserts  himself  uncompromisingly, 
but  he  would  have  you  do  the  same.  "He  who 
spreads  a  wider  breast  than  my  own  proves  the 
width  of  my  own."  "He  most  honors  my  style 
who  learns  under  it  to  destroy  the  teacher."  His 
highest  hope  is  to  be  the  soil  of  superior  poems. 

Mr.  Stedman  thinks  he  detects  in  the  poet  a  par 
tiality  for  the  coarser,  commoner  elements  of  our 
humanity  over  the  finer  and  choicer,  —  for  the 
"  rough  "  over  the  gentlenlan.  But  when  all  things 
have  been  duly  considered,  it  will  be  found,  I 
think,  that  he  finally  rests  only  with  great  personal 
qualities  and  traits.  He  is  drawn  by  powerful, 
natural  persons,  wherever  found,  —  men  and  women 
self-poised,  fully  equipped  on  all  sides :  — 

"I  announce  a  great  individual,  fluid  as  Nature,  chaste,  affec 
tionate,  compassionate,  fully  arm'd, 

I  announce  a  life  that  shall  be  copious,  vehement,  spiritual, 
bold,"  — 

and  much  more  to  the  same  effect. 

"  I  say  nourish  a  great  intellect,  a  great  brain  : 

If  I  have  said  anything  to  the  contrary,  I  hereby  retract  it." 

Whitman  is  a  formalist,  just  as  every  man  who 
has  a  way  of  his  own  of  saying  and  doing  things, 
no  matter  how  natural,  is  a  formalist;  but  he  is  not 
a  stickler  for  form  of  any  sort.  He  has  his  own 


HIS  RELATION  TO   ART  AND  LITERATURE      149 

proper  form,  of  course,  which  he  rarely  departs 
from.  At  one  extreme  of  artificiality  Mr.  Stedman 
apparently  places  the  sonnet.  This  is  an  arbitrary 
form;  its  rules  are  inflexible;  it  is  something  cut 
and  shaped  and  fitted  together  after  a  predetermined 
pattern,  and  to  this  extent  is  artificial.  If  Whit 
man's  irregularity  was  equally  studied;  if  it  gave  us 
the  same  sense  of  something  cunningly  planned  and 
wrought  to  a  particular  end,  clipped  here,  curbed 
there,  folded  back  in  this  line,  drawn  out  in  that, 
and  attaining  to  a  certain  mechanical  proportion  and 
balance  as  a  whole,  — then  there  would  be  good 
ground  for  the  critic's  charge.  But  such  is  not  the 
case.  Whitman  did  not  have,  nor  claim  to  have, 
the  architectonic  power  of  the  great  constructive 
poets.  He  did  not  build  the  lofty  rhyme.  He 
did  hof  build  anything,  strictly  speaking.  He  let 
himself  go.  He  named  his  book  after  the  grass7^ 
which  makes  a  carpet  over  the  earth,  and  which  is 
a  sign  and  a  presence  rather  than  a  form. 

XXII 

Whitman's  defects  flow  out  of  his  great  qualities. 
What  we  might  expect  from  his  size,  his  sense  of 
mass  and  multitude,  would  be  an  occasional  cum- 
brousness,  turgidity,  unwieldiness,  inefiectualness : 
what  we  might  expect  from  his  vivid  realism  would 
be  an  occasional  over-rankness  or  grossness;  from 
his  bluntness,  a  rudeness;  from  his  passion  for 
country,  a  little  spread-eagleism;  from  his  masterly 
use  of  indirection,  occasional  obscurity;  from  his 


150  WHITMAN 

mystic  identification  of  himself  with  what  is  com- 
monest,  cheapest,  nearest,  a  touch  at  times  of  the 
vulgar  and  unworthy;  from  his  tremendous  practi 
cal  democracy,  a  bias  at  times  toward  too  low  an 
average;  from  his  purpose  "to  effuse  egotism  and 
show  it  underlying  all,7'  may  arise  a  little  too  much 
self-assertion,  etc.  The  price  paid  for  his  stren- 
uousness  and  earnestness  will  be  a  want  of  humor; 
his  determination  to  glorify  the  human  body,  as  God 
made  it,  will  bring  him  in  collision  with  our  notions 
of  the  decent,  the  proper;  the  "courageous,  clear 
voice "  with  which  he  seeks  to  prove  the  sexual 
organs  and  acts  "illustrious,"  will  result  in  his 
being  excluded  from  good  society;  his  "heroic 
nudity  "  will  be  apt  to  set  the  good  dame,  Belles- 
lettres,  all  a-shiver;  his  healthful  coarseness  and 
godlike  candor  will  put  all  the  respectable  folk  to 
flight. 

XXIII 

To  say  that  Whitman  is  a  poet  in  undress  is  true 
within  certain  limits.  If  it  conveys  the  impression 
that  he  is  careless  or  inapt  in  the  use  of  language, 
or  that  the  word  is  not  always  the  fit  wordj  the 
best  word,  the  saying  does  him  injustice.  No  man 
ever  searched  more  diligently  for  the  right  word  — 
for  just  the  right  word  —  than  did  Whitman.  He 
would  wait  for  days  and  weeks  for  the  one  ultimate 
epithet.  How  long  he  pressed  the  language  for 
some  word  or  phrase  that  would  express  the  sense 
of  the  evening  call  of  the  robin,  and  died  without 


HIS  EELATION   TO  AET  AND  LITERATUEE      151 

the  sight !  But  his  language  never  obtrudes  itself. 
It  has  never  stood  before  the  mirror,  it  does  not 
consciously  challenge  your  admiration,  it  is  not  ob 
viously  studied,  it  is  never  on  dress  parade.  His 
matchless  phrases  seem  like  chance  hits,  so  much 
so  that  some  critics  have  wondered  how  he  happened 
to  stumble  upon  them.  His  verse  is  not  dressed 
up,  because  it  has  so  few  of  the  artificial  adjuncts 
of  poetry,  —  no  finery  or  stuck-on  ornament,  —  no 
thing  obtrusively  beautiful  or  poetic;  and  because 
it  bears  itself  with  the  freedom  and  nonchalance  of 
a  man  in  his  every-day  attire. 

But  it  is  always  in  a  measure  misleading  to  com 
pare  language  with  dress,  to  say  that  a  poet  clothes 
his  thought,  etc.  The  language  is  the  thought;  it 
is  an  incarnation,  not  an  outside  tailoring.  To  im 
prove  the  expression  is  to  improve  the  thought.  In 
the  most  vital  writing,  the  thought  is  nude;  the 
mind  of  the  reader  touches  something  alive  and 
real.  When  we  begin  to  hear  the  rustle  of  a  pom 
pous  or  highly  wrought  vocabulary,  when  the  man 
begins  to  dress  his  commonplace  ideas  up  in  fine 
phrases,  we  have  enough  of  him. 

Indeed,  it  is  only  the  mechanical  writer  who  may  I 
be  said  to  "clothe"  his  ideas  with  words;  the  real! 
poetMthinks  through  words. 

XXIV 

I  see  that  a  plausible  criticism  might  be  made 
against  Whitman,  perhaps  has  been  made,  that  in 
him  we  find  the  big  merely,  —  strength  without 


152  WHITMAN 

power,  size  without  quality.  A  hasty  reader  might 
carry  away  this  impression  from  his  work,  because 
undoubtedly  one  of  the  most  obvious  things  about 
him  is  his  great  size.  It  is  impossible  not  to  feel 
that  here  is  a  large  body  of  some  sort.  We  have 
come  upon  a  great  river,  a  great  lake,  an  immense 
plain,  a  rugged  mountain.  We  feel  that  this  mind 
requires  a  large  space  to  turn  in.  The  page  nearly 
always  gives  a  sense  of  mass  and  multitude.  All 
attempts  at  the  playful  or  humorous  seem  ungainly. 
The  style  is  processional  and  agglomerative.  Out 
of  these  vast,  rolling,  cloud-like  masses  does  there 
leap  forth  the  true  lightning?  It  seems  to  me 
there  can  be  no  doubt  about  that.  The  spirit  easily 
triumphs.  There  is  not  only  mass,  there  is  pene 
tration;  not  only  vastness,  there  is  sublimity;  not 
only  breadth,  there  is  quality  and  charm.  He  is 
both  Dantesque  and  Darwinian,  as  has  been  said. 

Mr.  Symonds  was  impressed  with  this  quality  of 
vastness  in  Whitman,  and,  despairing  of  conveying 
an  adequate  notion  of  him  by  any  process  of  liter 
ary  analysis,  resorts  to  the  use  of  a  succession  of 
metaphors,  —  the  symbolic  use  of  objects  that  con 
vey  the  idea  of  size  and  power.  Thus,  "he  is 
Behemoth,  wallowing  in  primeval  jungles;7'  "he 
is  a  gigantic  elk  or  buffalo,  trampling  the  grass  of 
the  wilderness ;  "  "  he  is  an  immense  tree,  a  kind 
of  Ygdrasil,  striking  its  roots  deep  down  into  the 
bowels  of  the  world;"  "he  is  the  circumambient 
air  in  which  float  shadowy  shapes,  rise  mirage- 
towers  and  palm-groves;"  "he  is  the  globe  itself, — 


HIS  RELATION   TO   ART   AND  LITERATURE      153 

all  seas,  lands,  forests,  climates,  storms,  snows,  sun-      t— 
shines,  rains  of  universal  earth." 

Colonel  Ingersoll  said  there  was  something  in 
him  akin  to  mountains  and  plains,  and  to  the  globe 
itself. 

But  Whitman  is  something  more  than  a  literary 
colossus.  Pigmies  can  only  claim  pigmy  honors. 
Size,  after  all,  rules  in  this  universe,  because  size 
and  power  go  together.  The  large  bodies  rule  the 
small.  There  is  no  impression  of  greatness  in  art 
without  something  that  is  analogous  to  size,  — 
breadth,  depth,  height.  The  sense  of  vastness  is 
never  the  gift  of  a  minor  poet.  You  cannot  paint 
Niagara  on  the  thumb-nail.  Great  artists  are  dis 
tinguished  from  small  by  the  majesty  of  their  con 
ceptions. 

Whitman's  air  is  continental.  He  implies  a  big 
country,  vast  masses  of  humanity,  sweeping  and 
stirring  times,  the  triumphs  of  science  and  the  in 
dustrial  age.  He  is  the  poet  of  mass  and  multi 
tude.  In  his  pages  things  are  grouped  and  on  the 
run,  as  it  were.  Little  detail,  little  or  no  elabora 
tion,  little  or  no  development  of  a  theme,  no  minute 
studied  effects  so  dear  to  the  poets,  but  glimpses, 
suggestions,  rapid  surveys,  sweeping  movements, 
processions  of  objects,  vista,  vastness,  —  everywhere 
the  effect  of  a  man  overlooking  great  spaces  and 
calling  off  the  significant  and  interesting  points. 
He  never  stops  to  paint;  he JLS_ contented  to  suggest.  «/ 
His  "  Leaves "  are  a  rapid,  joyous  survey  of  the 
forces  and  objects  of  the  universe,  first  with  refer- 


154  WHITMAN 

ence  to  character  and  personality,  and  next  with 
reference  to  America  and  democracy.  His  method 
of  treatment  is  wholesale  and  accumulative.  It  is 
typified  by  this  passage  in  his  first  poem :  — 

"  Listen  !    I  will  be  honest  with  you, 

I  do  not  offer  the  old  smooth  prizes,  but  offer  rough  new  prizes. 

"  I  tramp  a  perpetual  journey, 

My  signs  are  a  rain-proof  coat,  good  shoes,  and  a  staff  cut  from 

the  woods, 

No  friend  of  mine  takes  his  ease  in  my  chair, 
I  have  no  chair,  no  church,  no  philosophy, 
I  lead  no  man  to  a  dinner  table,  library,  or  exchange, 
But  each  man  and  each  woman  of  you  I  lead  upon  a  knoll, 
My  left  hand  hooking  you  round  the  waist, 
My  right  hand  pointing  to  landscapes  of  continents  and  a  plain 

public  road." 

/  He  deals  with  the  major  elements  of  life,  and 
always  aims  at  large  effects.  "Lover  of  populous 
pavements,"  he  is  occupied  with  large  thoughts  and 
images,  with  races,  eras,  multitudes,  processions. 
His  salute  is  to  the  world.  He  keeps  the  whole 
geography  of  his  country  and  of  the  globe  before 
him;  his  purpose  in  his  poems  spans  the  whole 
modern  world.  He  views  life  as  from  some  emi 
nence  from  which  many  shades  and  differences  dis 
appear.  He  sees  things  in  mass.  Many  of  our 
cherished  conventions  disappear  from  his  point  of 
view.  He  sees  the  fundamental  and  necessary 
things.  His  vision  is  sweeping  and  final.  He 
tries  himself  by  the  orbs.  His  standards  of  poetry 
and  art  are  astronomic.  He  sees  his  own  likeness 
in  the  earth.  His  rapture  springs,  not  so  much 
from  the  contemplation  of  bits  and  parts  as  from 


HIS  RELATION  TO   ART  AND  LITERATURE      155 

the  contemplation  of  the  whole.  There  is  a  breadth 
of  sympathy  and  of  interest  that  does  not  mind  par 
ticulars.  He  says :  — 

"It  is  no  small  matter,  this  round  and  delicious  globe,  moving  so 

exactly  in  its  orbit  forever  and  ever,  without  one  jolt,  or 

the  untruth  of  a  single  second, 
I  do  not  think  it  was  made  in  six  days,  nor  in  ten  thousand 

years,  nor  ten  billions  of  years, 
Nor  planned  and  built  one  thing  after  another  as  an  architect 

plans  and  builds  a  house." 

In  old  age  he  sees  "the  estuary  that  enlarges  and 
spreads  itself  grandly  as  it  pours  into  the  sea." 
He  looks  upon  all  things  at  a  certain  remove. 
These  are  typical  lines :  — 

"  A  thousand  perfect  men  and  women  appear, 
Around  each  gathers  a  cluster  of  friends,  and  gay  children  and 
youths,  with  offerings." 

"  Women  sit,  or  move  to  and  fro,  some  old,  some  young, 
The  young  are  beautiful  —  but  the  old  are  more  beautiful  than 
the  young." 

"The  Kunner,"  "A  Farm  Picture,"  and  scores  of  v 
others,  are  to  the  same  effect.  Always  wholes,  total 
impressions,  —  always  a  view  as  of  a  "  strong  bird  on 
pinion  free."  Few  details,  but  panoramic  effects; 
not  the  flower,  but  the  landscape;  not  a  tree,  but 
a  forest;  not  a  street  corner,  but  a  city.  The  title 
of  one  of  his  poems,  "A  Song  of  the  Rolling  Earth, "  c 
might  stand  as  the  title  of  the  book.  When  he 
gathers  details  and  special  features  he  masses  them 
like  a  bouquet  of  herbs  and  flowers.  No  cameo 
carving,  but  large,  bold,  rough,  heroic  sculpturing. 
The  poetry  is  always  in  the  totals,  the  breadth,  the 


156  WHITMAN 

sweep  of  conception.  The  part  that  is  local,  specific, 
genre,  near  at  hand,  is  Whitman  himself ;  his  person 
ality  is  the  background  across  which  it  all  flits. 

We  make  a  mistake  when  we  demand  of  Whit 
man  what  the  other  poets  give  us,  —  studies,  em 
broidery,  delicate  tracings,  pleasing  artistic  effects, 
rounded  and  finished  specimens.  We  shall  un 
derstand  him  better  if  we  inquire  what  his  own 
standards  are,  what  kind  of  a  poet  he  would  be. 
He  tells  us  over  and  over  again  that  he_^  would 
emulate  the  great  forces  and  processes  of  Nature. 
He  seeks  for  hints  in  the  sea,  the  mountain,  in  the 
orbs  themselves.  In  the  wild  splendor  and  savage- 
ness  of  a  Colorado  canyon  he  sees  a  spirit  kindred 
to  his  own. 

He  dwells  fondly,  significantly,  upon  the  ampli 
tude,  the  coarseness,  and  what  he  calls  the  sexual 
ity,  of  the  earth,  and  upon  its  great  charity  and 
equilibrium. 

"The  earth,"  he  says,  "does  not  withhold;  it  is 
generous  enough :  — 

"  The  truths  of  the  earth  continually  wait,  they  are  not  so  con 
cealed  either, 

They  ar^  calm,  subtle,  untransmissible  by  print. 

The}'  are  imbued  through  all  things,  conveying  themselves 
willingly, 

Conveying  a  sentiment  and  invitation  of  the  earth  —  I  utter  and 
utter  !  " 

"  The  earth  does  not  argue, 

Is  not  pathetic,  has  no  arrangements, 

Does  not  scream,  haste,  persuade,  threaten,  promise, 

Makes  no  discriminations,  has  no  conceivable  failures, 

Closes  nothing,  refuses  nothing,  shuts  none  out. 

Of  all  the  powers,  objects,  states,  it  notifies,  shuts  none  out." 


HIS  RELATION   TO  ART   AND  LITERATURE      157 

He  says  the  best  of  life 

"Is  not  what  you  anticipated  —  it  is  cheaper,  easier,  nearer," 

and  that  the  earth  affords  the  final  standard  of  all 
things : — 

"  I  swear  there  can  be  no  theory  of  any  account  unless  it  corrob 
orate  the  theory  of  the  earth, 

No  politics,  art,  religion,  behavior,  or  what  not,  is  of  account  un 
less  it  compares  with  the  amplitude  of  the  earth, 

Unless  it  face  the  exactness,  vitality,  impartiality,  rectitude,  of 
the  earth." 

No  one  can  make  a  study  of  our  poet  without 
being  deeply  impressed  with  these  and  kindred  pas 
sages  :  — 

•    •  **- 

"  The  maker  of  poems  settles  justice,  reality,  immortality, 
His  insight  and  power  encircle  things  and  the  human  race. 
The  singers  do  not  beget,  only  the  Poet  begets, 
The  singers  are  welcom'd,  understood,  appear  often  enough,  but 

rare  has  the  day  been,  likewise  the  spot,  of  the  birth  of  the 

maker  of  poems,  the  Answerer, 
(Not  every  century,  nor  every  five  centuries  has  contain'd  such 

a  day,  for  all  its  names.) 

"All  this  time  and  at  all  times  wait  the  words  of  true  poems, 
ic  words  of  true  poems  do  not  merely  please,  . 

true  poets  are  not  followers  of  beauty,  but  the  august  masters   V 

beauty  ; 
The  greatness  of  sons  is  the  exuding  of  the  greatness  of  mothers 

and  fathers, 
The  words  of  true  poems  are  the  tuft  and  final  applause  of  science. 

"Divine  instinct,  breadth  of  vision,  the  law  of  reason,  health, 
rudeness  of  body,  withdrawnness, 

Gayetv,  sun-tan,  air-sweetness,  such  are  some  of  the  words  of 
poems, 

The  sailor,  the  traveler,  underlie  the  maker  of  poems,  the  An 
swerer, 

The  builder,  geometer,  chemist,  anatomist,  phrenologist,  artist, 
all  these  underlie  the  maker  of  poems,  the  Answerer. 


, JThe  wor< 
jfThe  true 
"  of 


158  WHITMAN 

The  words  of  the  true  poems  give  you  more  than  poems  ; 
They  give  you  to  form  for  yourself  poems,  religions,  politics,  war, 

peace,  behavior,  histories,  essays,  daily  life^  and  everything 

else. 

They  balance  ranks,  colors,  races,  creeds,  and  the  sexes  ; 
They  do  not  seek  beauty,  they  are  sought, 

Forever  touching  them  or  close  upon  them  follows  beauty,  long 
ing,  fain,  love-sick. 
They  prepare  for  death,  yet  are  they  not  the  finish,  but  rather 

the  outset, 
They  bring  none  to  his  or  her  terminus  or  to  be  contented  and 

full, 
Whom  they  take  they  take  into  space  to  behold  the  birth  of  stars, 

to  learn  one  of  the  meanings, 
To  launch  off  with  absolute  faith,  to  sweep  through  the  ceaseless 

rings  and  never  be  quiet  again. 

"  Of  these  States  the  poet  is  the  equable  man, 

Not  in  him  but  off  from  him  things  are  grotesque,  eccentric,  fail 
of  their  full  returns, 

Nothing  out  of  its  place  is  good,  nothing  in  its  place  is  bad, 

He  bestows  on  every  object  or  quality  its  fit  proportion,  neither 
more  nor  less, 

He  is  the  arbiter  of  the  diverse,  he  is  the  key, 

He  is  the  equalizer  of  his  age  and  land, 

He  supplies  what  wants  supplying,  he  checks  what  wants  check 
ing, 

In  peace  out  of  him  speaks  the  spirit  of  peace,  large,  rich,  thrifty, 
building  populous  towns,  encouraging  agriculture,  arts, 
commerce,  lighting  the  study  of  man,  the  soul,  health,  im 
mortality,  government, 

In  war  he  is  the  best  backer  of  the  war,  he  fetches  artillery  as 
good  as  the  engineer's,  he  can  make  every  word  he  speaks 
draw  blood, 

The  years  straying  toward  infidelity  he  withholds  by  his  steady 
faith, 

He  is  no  arguer,  he  is  iudgment  (nature  accepts  him  absolutely), 

He  judges  not  as  the  judge  judges,  but  as  the  sun  falling  round 
a  helpless  thing, 

As  he  sees  the  farthest  he  has  the  most  faith, 

His  thoughts  are  the  hymns  of  the  praise  of  things, 

In  the  dispute  on  God  and  eternity  he  is  silent, 

He  sees  eternity  less  like  a  .play  with  a  prologue  and  denoue 
ment, 


HIS  RELATION   TO  ART  AND  LITERATURE      159 

6e  sees  eternity  in  men  and  women,  he  does  not  see  men  and  t 
J          women  as  dreams  or  dots.  V 

"Rhymes  and  rhymers  pass  away,  poems  distill'd  from  other     v 
poems  pass  away,  \ 

The  swarms  of  reflectors  and  the  polite  pass,  and  leave  ashes, 
Admirers,  impostors,  obedient  persons,  make  but  the  soil  of  lit 
erature." 

Folded  up  in  these  sentences,  often  many  times 
folded  up,  is  Whitman's  idea  of  the  poet,  the  be 
getter,  the  reconciler;  not  the  priest  of  the  beauti 
ful,  but  the  master  of  the  All,  who  does  not  appear 
once  in  centuries. 

We  hear  nothing  of  the  popular  conception  of 
the  poet,  well  reflected  in  these  lines  of  Tennyson :  — 

"  The  poet  in  a  golden  clime  was  born,  with  golden  stars  above." 

"  Golden  stars  "  and  "  golden  climes  "  do  not  figure 
at  all  in  Whitman's  pages;  the  spirit  of  romance 
is  sternly  excluded. 

Whitman's  ideal  poet  is  the  most  composite  man, 
rich  in  temperament,  rank  in  the  human  attributes, 
embracing  races  and  eras  in  himself.  All  men  see 
themselves  in  him :  — 

"  The  mechanic  takes  him  for  a  mechanic, 

And  the  soldier  supposes  him  to  be  a  soldier,  and  the  sailor  that 

he  has  followed  the  sea, 
And  the  authors  take  him  for  an  author,  and  the  artists  for  an 

artist, 
And  the  laborers  perceive  he  could  labor  with  them  and  love 

them, 
No  matter  what  the  work  is,  that  he  is  the  one  to  follow  it,  or  has 

followed  it, 
No  matter  what  the  nation,  that  he  might  find  his  brothers  and 

sisters  there. 


160  WHITMAN 

"  The  gentleman  of  perfect  blood  acknowledges  his  perfect  blood, 
The  insulter,  the  prostitute,  the  angry  person,  the  beggar,  see 

themselves  in  the  ways  of  him,  he  strangely  transmutes 

them, 
They  are  not  vile  any  more,  they  hardly  know  themselves  they 

are  so  grown." 

Let  us  hold  the  poet  to  his  own  ideals,  and  not 
condemn  him  because  he  has  not  aimed  at  some 
thing  foreign  to  himself. 

The  questions  which  Whitman  puts  to  him  who 
would  be  an  American  poet  may  fairly  be  put  to 
himself. 

"Are  you  faithful  to  things  ?    Do  you  teach  what  the  land  and 

sea,  the  bodies  of  men,  womanhood,   amativeness,  heroic 

angers,  teach  ? 

Have  you  sped  through  fleeting  customs,  popularities  ? 
Can  you, hold  your  hand  against  all  seductions,  follies,  whirls, 

fierce  contentions  ?  are  you  very  strong  ?  are  you  really  of 

the  whole  people  ? 

Are  you  not  of  some  coterie  ?  some  school,  or  mere  religion  ? 
Are  you  done  with  reviews  and  criticisms  of  life  ?  animating  now 

to  life  itself  ? 

Have  you  vivified  yourself  from  the  maternity  of  these  States  ? 
Have  you,  too,  the  old,  ever-fresh  forbearance  and  impartiality  ? 

What  is  this  you  bring  my  America  ? 

Is  it  uniform  with  my  country  ? 

Is  it  not  something  that  has  been  better  done  or  told  before  ? 

Have  you  not  imported  this  or  the  spirit  of  it  in  some  ship  ? 

Is  it  not  a  mere  tale  ?  a  rhyme  ?  a  pettiness  ?  —  is  the  good  old 

cause  in  it  ? 
Has  it  not  dangled  long  at  the  heels  of  the  poets,  politicians,  lit- 

erats  of  enemies'  lands  ? 

Does  it  not  assume  that  what  is  notoriously  gone  is  still  here  ? 
Does  it  answer  universal  needs  ?  will  it  improve  manners  ? 
Can  your  performance  face  the  open  fields  and  the  seaside  ? 
Will  it  absorb  into  me  as  I  absorb  food,  air,  to  appear  again  in 

my  strength,  gait,  face  ? 
Have  real  employments  contributed  to  it  ?    Original  makers,  not 

mere  amanuenses  ? 


HIS  RELATION  TO  ART   AND  LITERATURE      161 

So  far  as  Whitman's  poetry  falls  within  any  of 
the  old  divisions  it  is  lyrical,  —  a  personal  and 
individual  utterance.  Open  the  book  anywhere 
and  you  are  face  to  face  with  a  man.  His  eye  is 
fixed  upon  you.  It  is  a  man's  voice  you  hear,  and 
it  is  directed  to  you.  He  is  not  elaborating  a 
theme:  he  is  suggesting  a  relation  or  hinting  a 
meaning.  He  is  not  chiseling,  or  carving  a  work 
of  art:  he  is  roughly  outlining  a  man;  he  is  plant 
ing  a  seed,  or  tilling  a  field. 

XXV 

I  believe  it  was  the  lamented  Professor  Clifford 
who  first  used  the  term  "  cosmic  emotion  "  in  con 
nection  with  "  Leaves  of  Grass. "  Whitman's  atmos 
phere  is  so  distinctly  outside  of  and  above  that 
which  ministers  to  our  social  and  domestic  wants,  — 
the  confined  and  perfumed  air  of  an  indoor  life; 
his  mood  and  temper  are  so  habitually  begotten  by 
the  contemplation  of  the  orbs  and  the  laws  and 
processes  of  universal  nature,  that  the  phrase  often 
comes  to  mind  in  considering  him.  He  is  not  in 
any  sense,  except  perhaps  in  a  few  minor  pieces, 
a  domestic  and  fireside  poet,  —  a  solace  to  our  social 
instincts  and  cultivated  ideals.  He  is  too  large, 
too  aboriginal,  too  elemental,  too  strong  for  that. 
I  seem  to  understand  and  appreciate  him  best  when 
I  keep  in  mind  the  earth  as  a  whole,  and  its  rela 
tion  to  the  system.  Any  large  view  or  thought, 
or  survey  of  life  or  mankind,  is  a  preparation  for 
him.  He  demands  the  outdoor  temper  and  habit, 


162  WHITMAN 

he  demands  a  sense  of  space  and  power,  he  demands 
above  all  things  a  feeling  for  reality.  "Vastness" 
is  a  word  that  applies  to  him ;  abysmal  man,  cosmic 
consciousness,  the  standards  of  the  natural  universal, 

—  all  hint  some  phase  of  his  genius.      His  survey 
of  life   and  duty  is  from  a  point  not  included  in 
any  four  walls,  or  in  any  school  or  convention.      It 
is  a  survey  from  out  the  depths  of  being ;  the  breath 
of  worlds  and  systems  is  in  these  utterances.      His 
treatment  of  sex,  of  comradeship,  of  death,  of  demo 
cracy,  of  religion,  of  art,  of  immortality,  is  in  the 
spirit  of  the  great  out-of-doors  of  the  universe ;  the 
point  of  view  is  cosmic  rather  than  personal  or  phil 
anthropic.      What  charity  is  this !  —  the  charity  of 
sunlight  that  spares  nothing  and  turns  away  from 
nothing.     What  "heroic  nudity'7!  like  the  naked 
ness  of  rocks  and  winter  trees.      What  sexuality! 
like  the  lust  of  spring  or  the  push  of  tides.     What 
welcome  to  death,  as  only  the  night  which  proves 
the  day ! 

XXVI 

This  orbic  nature  which  so  thrills  and  fills  Whit 
man  is  not  at  all  akin  to  that  which  we  get  in  the 
so-called  nature-poets  of  Wordsworth  and  his  school, 

—  the   charm  of   privacy,    of   the    sequestered,  the 
cosy, —  qualities  that  belong  to  the  art  of  a  domestic, 
home-loving  race,  and  to  lovers  of  solitude.      Ten 
nyson's  poetry  abounds  in  these  qualities;  so  does 
Wordsworth's.     There  is  less  of  them  in  Browning, 
and    more    of  them   in   the  younger   poets.      That 
communing  with  nature,  those  dear  friendships  with 


HIS   RELATION   TO   ART  AND  LITERATURE      163 

birds  and  flowers,  that  gentle  wooing  of  the  wild 
and  sylvan,  that  flavor  of  the  rural,  the  bucolic,  — 
all  these  are  important  features  in  the  current  popu 
lar  poetry,  but  they  are  not  to  any  marked  extent 
characteristic  of  Whitman.  The  sentiment  of  do 
mesticity,  love  as  a  sentiment;  the  attraction  of 
children,  home  and  fireside ;  the  attraction  of  books, 
art,  travel;  our  pleasure  in  the  choice,  the  refined, 
the  artificial,  —  these  are  not  the  things  you  are  to 
demand  of  Whitman.  You  do  not  demand  them  of 
Homer  or  Dante  or  the  Biblical  writers.  We  are  to 
demand  of  him  the  major  things,  primary  things; 
the  lift  of  great  emotions ;  the  cosmic,  the  universal ; 
the  joy  of  health,  of  selfhood;  the  stimulus  of  the 
real,  the  modern,  the  American;  always  the  large, 
the  virile;  always  perfect  acceptance  and  triumph. 

Whitman's  free  use  of  the  speech  of  the  common 
people  is  doubtless  offensive  to  a  fastidious  literary 
taste.  Such  phrases  as  "I  will  be  even  with  you," 
"what  would  it  amount  to,"  "give  in,"  "not  one  jot 
less;"  "young  fellows,"  "old  fellows,"  "stuck  up," 
"every  bit  as  much,"  "week  in  and  week  out,"  and 
a  thousand  others,  would  jar  on  the  page  of  any 
other  poet  more  than  on  his. 

XXVII 

William  Rossetti  says  his  language  has  a  certain 
ultimate  quality.  Another  critic  speaks  of  his  abso 
lute  use  of  language.  Colonel  Ingersoll  credits  him 
with  more  supreme  words  than  have  been  uttered  by 
any  other  man  of  our  time. 


164  WHITMAN 

The  power  to  use  words  was  in  Whitman's  eyes 
a  divine  power,  and  was  bought  with  a  price :  — 

"  For  only  at  last  after  many  years,  after  chastity,  friendship, 

procreation,  prudence,  and  nakedness, 
After  treading  ground,  and  breasting  river  and  lake, 
After  aloosen'd  throat,  after  absorbing  eras,  temperaments,  races, 

after  knowledge,  freedom,  crimes, 
After  complete  faith,  after  clarifying  elevations  and  removing 

obstructions, 
After  these  and  more,  it  is  just  possible  there  comes  to  a  man,  a 

woman,  the  divine  power  to  speak  words." 

Whitman's  sense  of  composition  and  his  rare 
artistic  faculty  of  using  language  are  seen,  as  John 
Addington  Symonds  says,  in  the  "countless  clear 
and  perfect  phrases"  "which  are  hung,  like  golden 
medals  of  consummate  workmanship  and  incised 
form,  in  rich  clusters  over  every  poem  he  produced. 
And,  what  he  aimed  at  above  all,  these  phrases  are 
redolent  of  the  very  spirit  of  the  emotions  they 
suggest,  communicate  the  breadth  and  largeness  of 
the  natural  things  they  indicate,  embody  the  essence 
of  realities  in  living  words  which  palpitate  and 
burn  forever." 

The  great  poet  is  always  more  or  less  the  origi 
nal,  the  abysmal  man.  He  is  face  to  face  with 
universal  laws  and  conditions.  He  speaks  out  of 
a  greater  exaltation  of  sentiment  than  the  prose- 
writer.  He  takes  liberties;  he  speaks  for  all  men; 
he  is  a  bird  on  "pinions  free." 


HIS  RELATION   TO  ART  AND  LITERATURE      165 


XXVIII 

In  saying  or  implying  that  Whitman's  aim  was 
not  primarily  literary  or  artistic,  I  am  liable  to  be 
misunderstood;  and  when  Whitman  himself  says, 
"No  one  will  get  at  my  verses  who  insists  upon 
viewing  them  as  a  literary  performance,  or  attempt 
at  such  performance,  or  as  aiming  mainly  toward 
art  or  sestheticism, "  he  exposes  himself  to  the  same 
misconception.  It  is  the  literary  and  poetic  value 
of  his  verses  alone  that  can  save  them.  Their 
philosophy,  their  democracy,  their  vehement  pa 
triotism,  their  religious  ardor,  their  spirit  of  com 
radeship,  or  what  not,  will  not  alone  suffice.  All 
depends  upon  the  manner  in  which  these  things  are 
presented  to  us.  Do  we  get  the  reality,  or  words 
about  the  reality  ?  No  matter  what  the  content  of 
the  verse,  unless  into  the  whole  is  breathed  the 
breath  of  the  true  creative  artist  they  will  surely 
perish.  Oblivion  awaits  every  utterance  not  touched 
with  the  life  of  the  spirit.  Whitman  was  as  essen 
tially  an  artist  as  was  Shakespeare  or  Dante;  his 
work  shows  the  same  fusion  of  imagination,  will, 
emotion,  personality;  it  carries  the  same  quality  of 
real  things,  —  not  the  same  shaping,  constructive 
power,  but  the  same  quickening,  stimulating  power, 
the  same  magic  use  of  words.  The  artist  in  him  is 
less  conscious  of  itself,  is  less  differentiated  from  the 
man,  than  in  the  other  poets.  He  objected  to  hav 
ing  his  work  estimated  for  its  literary  value  alone, 
but  in  so  doing  he  used  the  word  in  a  narrow  sense. 


166  WHITMAN 

After  all  these  ages  of  the  assiduous  cultivation 
of  literature,  there  has  grown  up  in  men  a  kind 
of  lust  of  the  mere  art  of  writing,  just  as,  after 
so  many  generations  of  religious  training,  there  has 
grown  up  a  passion  for  religious  forms  and  obser 
vances.  "Mere  literature"  has  come  to  be  a  cur 
rent  phrase  in  criticism,  meaning,  I  suppose,  that 
the  production  to  which  it  is  applied  is  notable 
only  for  good  craftsmanship.  In  the  same  spirit 
one  speaks  of  mere  scholarship,  or  of  a  certain  type 
of  man  as  a  mere  gentleman.  It  was  mere  litera 
ture  that  Whitman  was  afraid  of,  the  aesthetic  dis 
ease,  the  passion  for  letters,  for  poetry,  divorced 
from  love  of  life  and  of  things.  None  knew  better 
than  he  that  the  ultimate  value  of  any  imaginative 
and  emotional  work,  even  of  the  Bible,  is  its  liter 
ary  value.  Its  spiritual  and  religious  value  is  in 
separably  connected  with  its  literary  value. 

"Leaves  of  Grass"  is  not  bookish;  it  is  always 
the  voice  of  a  man,  and  not  of  a  scholar  or  conven 
tional  poet,  that  addresses  us.  We  all  imbue  words 
more  or  less  with  meanings  of  our  own;  but,  froir" 
/'the  point  of  view  I  am  now  essaying,  literature  i^ 
the  largest  fact,  and  embraces  all  inspired  utter 
ances.  The  hymn-book  seeks  to  embody  or  awaken 
religious  emotion  alone;  would  its  religious  value 
be  less  if  its  poetic  value  were  more  1  I  think  not. 
The  best  of  the  Psalms  of  David,  from  the  religious 
point  of  view,  are  the  best  from  the  literary  point 
of  view.  What  reaches  and  thrills  the  soul,  —  that 
is  great  art.  What  arouses  the  passions  —  mirth, 


HIS  RELATION  TO  AET  AND  LITERATURE      167 

anger,  indignation,  pity  —  may  or  may  not  be  true 
art.  No  one,  for  instance,  can  read  "Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin  "  without  tears,  laughter,  anger ;  but  no  one, 
I  fancy,  could  ever  get  from  it  that  deep,  tranquil 
pleasure  and  edification  that  the  great  imaginative 
works  impart.  Keble's  poetry  is  more  obviously 
religious  than  Wordsworth's  or  Arnold's,  but  how 
short-lived,  because  it  is  not  embalmed  in  the  true 
artistic  spirit!  In  all  the  great  poems,  there  is 
something  as  deep  and  calm  as  the  light  and  the 
sky,  and  as  common  and  universal.  I  find  this 
something  in  Whitman.  In  saying,  therefore,  that 
his  aim  was  ulterior  to  that  of  art,  that  he  was  not 
begotten  by  the  literary  spirit,  I  only  mean  that  his 
aim  was  that  of  the  largest  art,  and  of  the  most 
vital  and  comprehensive  literature.  We  should 
have  heard  the  last  of  his  "  Leaves  "  long  ago  had 
they  not  possessed  unmistakably  the  vitality  of  true 
literature,  "incomparable  things,  incomparably  well 
said,"  as  Emerson  remarked. 

A  scientific  or  philosophical  work  lives  indepen 
dently  of  its  literary  merit,  but  an  emotional  and 
imaginative  work  lives  only  by  virtue  of  its  literary 
merit.  Different  meanings  may  be  attached  to  these 
words  "literary  merit"  by  different  persons.  I 
use  them  as  meaning  that  vital  and  imaginative  use 
of  language  which  is  the  characteristic  of  all  true 
literature.  The  most  effective  way  of  saying  a  thing 
in  the  region  of  the  sentiments  and  emotions,  —  that 
is  the  true  literary  way. 


HIS   KELATION   TO   LIFE   AND   MOBALS 


I  HAVE  divided  my  subject  into  many  chapters, 
and  given  to  each  a  separate  heading,  yet  I  am 
aware  that  they  are  all  hut  slight  variations  of  a 
single  theme,  — viz.,  Whitman's  reliance  upon  abso 
lute  nature.  That  there  might  be  no  mistake  about 
it,  and  that  his  reader  might  at  once  be  put  in 
possession  of  his  point  of  view,  the  poet  declared 
at  the  outset  of  his  career  that  at  every  hazard  he 
should  let  nature  speak. 

"  Creeds  and  schools  in  abeyance 

Retiring  back  awhile,  sufficed  at  what  they  are,  but  never  forgot 
ten, 

I  harbor  for  good  or  bad, 
I  permit  to  speak  at  every  hazard, 
Nature  without  check,  with  original  energy." 

The  hazard  of  letting  nature  speak  will,  of  course, 
be  great,  —  the  hazard  of  gross  misapprehension  on 
the  part  of  the  public,  and  of  hesitancy  and  inade 
quacy  on  the  part  of  the  poet.  The  latter  danger, 
I  think,  was  safely  passed ;  Whitman  never  flinched 
or  wavered  for  a  moment,  and  that  his  criticism  is 
adequate  seems  to  me  equally  obvious.  But  the 
former  contingency  —  the  gross  misapprehension  of 
the  public,  even  the  wiser  public  —  has  been  as 
tounding.  He  has  been  read  in  a  narrow,  literal, 


170  WHITMAN 

bourgeois  spirit.  The  personal  pronoun,  which  he 
uses  so  freely,  has  been  taken  to  stand  for  the  pri 
vate  individual  Walt  Whitman,  so  that  he  has  been 
looked  upon  as  a  compound  of  egotism  and  licen 
tiousness.  His  character  has  been  traduced,  and 
his  purpose  in  the  "  Leaves "  entirely  misunder 
stood. 

We  see  at  a  glance  that  his  attitude  towards 
nature,  towards  God,  towards  the  body  and  the 
soul,  reverses  many  of  the  old  ascetic  theological 
conceptions. 

All  is  good,  all  is  as  it  should  be;  to  abase  the 
body  is  to  abase  the  soul.  Man  is  divine  inside 
and  out,  and  is  no  more  divine  about  the  head  than 
about  the  loins.  It  is  from  this  point  of  view  that 
he  has  launched  his  work.  He  believed  the  time 
had  come  for  an  utterance  out  of  radical,  uncompro 
mising  human  nature;  let  conventions  and  refine^ 
ments  stand  back,  let  nature,  let  the  soul,  let  the 
elemental  forces  speak;  let  the  body,  the  passions, 
sex,  be  exalted;  the  stone  rejected  by  the  builders 
shall  be  the  chief  stone  in  the  corner.  Evil  shall 
be  shown  to  be  a  part  of  the  good,  and  death  shall 
be  welcomed  as  joyously  as  life. 

Whitman  says  his  poems  will  do  just  as  much 
evil  as  good,  and  perhaps  more.  To  many  readers 
this  confession  of  itself  would  be  his  condemnation. 
To  others  it  would  be  an  evidence  of  his  candor 
and  breadth  of  view.  I  suppose  all  great  vital 
forces,  whether  embodied  in  a  man  or  in  a  book, 
work  evil  as  well  as  good.  If  they  do  not,  they 


HIS  RELATION   TO  LIFE   AND   MORALS       171 

only  tickle  the  surface  of  things.  Has  not  the 
Bible  worked  evil  also?  Some  think  more  evil 
than  good.  The  dews  and  the  rains  and  the  sun 
shine  work  evil. 

From  Whitman's  point  of  view,  there  is  no  good 
without  evil;  evil  is  an  unripe  kind  of  good. 
There  is  no  light  without  darkness,  no  life  without 
death,  no  growth  without  pain  and  struggle.  Be 
ware  the  emasculated  good,  the  good  by  exclusion 
rather  than  by  victory.  "Leaves  of  Grass"  will 
work  evil  on  evil  minds,  —  on  narrow,  unbalanced 
minds.  It  is  not  a  guide,  but  an  inspiration;  not 
a  remedy,  but  health  and  strength.  Art  does  not 
preach  directly,  but  indirectly;  it  is  moral  by  its 
spirit,  and  the  mood  and  temper  it  begets. 

Whitman,  in  celebrating  manly  pride,  self-reli 
ance,  the  deliciousness  of  sex;  in  glorifying  the 
body,  the  natural  passions  and  appetites,  nativity; 
in  identifying  himself  with  criminals  and  low  or 
lewd  persons;  in  frankly  imputing  to  himself  all 
sins  men  are  guilty  of,  runs  the  risk,  of  course,  of 
being  read  in  a  spirit  less  generous  and  redemptive 
than  his  own. 

The  charity  of  the  poet  may  stimulate  the  license 
of  the  libertine;  the  optimism  of  the  seer  may  con 
firm  the  evil-doer;  the  equality  of  the  democrat 
may  foster  the  insolence  of  the  rowdy.  This  is  our 
lookout  and  not  the  poet's.  We  take  the  same 
chances  with  him  that  we  do  with  nature;  we  are 
to  trim  our  sails  to  the  breeze  he  brings;  we  are  to 
sow  wheat  and  not  tares  for  his  rains  to  water. 


172  WHITMAN 

Whitman's  glorification  of  the  body  has  led  some 
critics  to  say  that  he  is  the  poet  of  the  body  only. 
But  it  is  just  ar  true  to  say  he  is  the  poet  of  the 
soul  only.  He  always  seeks  the  spiritual  through 
the  material.  He  treats  the  body  and  the  soul  as 
one,  and  he  treats  all  things  as  having  reference  to 
the  soul. 

"I  will  not  make  a  poem,  nor  the  least  part  of  a  poem,  but  has 

reference  to  the  soul, 
Because,  having  look'dat  the  objects  of  the  universe,  I  tind  there 

is  no  one,  nor  any  particle  of  one,  but  has  reference  to  the 

soul." 

The  curious  physiological  strain  which  runs 
through  the  poems  is  to  be  considered  in  the  light 
of  this  idea.  He  exalts  the  body  because  in  doing 
so  he  exalts  the  soul. 

"  Sure  as  the  earth  swims  through  the  heavens,  does  every  one  of 
its  objects  pass  into  spiritual  results." 

II 

The  reader  of  Whitman  must  do  his  or  her  own 
moralizing;  the  poet  is  here  not  to  deprecate  or 
criticise,  but  to  love  and  celebrate;  he  has  no  par 
tialities;  our  notions  of  morality  do  not  concern 
him;  he  exploits  the  average  man  just  as  he  finds 
him ;  he  is  the  average  man  for  the  time  being  and 
confesses  to  all  his  sins  and  shortcomings,  arid  we 
will  make  of  the  result  good  or  evil,  according  to 
our  mental  horizon.  That  his  work  is  unmixed 
good  is  the  last  thing  the  poet  would  claim  for  it. 
He  has  not,  after  the  easy  fashion  of  the  moralist, 
set  the  good  here  and  the  bad  there ;  he  has  blended 


HIS  RELATION  TO  LIFE  AND  MORALS       173 

them  as  they  are  in  nature  and  in  life;  our  pro 
fit  and  discipline  begin  when  we  have  found  out 
whither  he  finally  tends,  or  when  we  have  mastered 
him  and  extracted  the  good  he  holds.  If  we  ex 
pect  he  is  going  to  preach  an  austere  system  of 
morality  to  us,  or  any  system  of  morality,  we  are 
doomed  to  disappointment.  Does  Nature  preach 
such  a  system?  does  Nature  preach  at  all?  neither 
will  he.  He  presents  you  the  elements  of  good  and 
evil  in  himself  in  vital  fusion  and  play;  your  part 
is  to  see  how  the  totals  are  at  last  good. 

It  is  objected  that  Whitman  is  too  persistent  in 
declaring  himself  an  animal,  when  the  thing  a  man 
is  least  likely  to  forget  is  that  he  is  an  animal  and 
the  thing  he  is  least  likely  to  remember  is  that 
he  is  a  spirit  and  a  child  of  God.  But  Whitman 
insists  with  the  same  determination  that  he  is  a 
spirit  and  an  heir  of  immortality,  —  not  as  one 
who  has  cheated  the  devil  of  his  due,  but  as  one 
who  shares  the  privileges  and  felicities  of  all,  and 
who  finds  the  divine  in  the  human.  Indeed  it  is 
here  that  he  sounds  his  most  joyous  and  trium 
phant  note.  No  such  faith  in  spiritual  results,  no 
such  conviction  of  the  truth  of  immortality,  no  such 
determined  recognition  of  the  unseen  world  as  the 
final  reality  is  to  be  found  in  modern  poetry. 

As  I  have  said,  Whitman  aimed  to  put  his  whole 
nature  in  a  poem  —  the  physical  or  physiological,  the 
spiritual,  the  aesthetic  and  intellectual,  — without  giv 
ing  any  undue  prominence  to  either.  If  he  has  not 
done  so,  if  he  has  made  the  animal  and  sexual  too 


174  WHITMAN 

pronounced,  more  so  than  nature  will  justify  in  the 
best  proportioned  man,  then  and  then  only  is  his 
artistic  scheme  vitiated  and  his  work  truly  immoral. 
It  may  be  true  that  the  thing  a  man  is  least 
likely  to  forget  is  that  he  is  an  animal;  what  he  is 
most  likely  to  forget,  is  that  tne  animal  is  just  as 
sacred  and  important  as  any  other  part;  indeed  that 
it  is  the  basis  of  all,  and  that  a  sane  and  health 
ful  and  powerful  spirituality  and  intellectuality  can 
only  flow  out  of  a  sane  and  healthful  animality. 

"  I  believe  in  you,  my  soul,  the  other  I  am  must  not  abase  itself 

to  you, 
And  you  must  not  be  abased  to  the  other." 

Ill 

Furthermore,  Whitman's  main  problem  is  to  pro 
ject  into  literature  the  new  democratic  man  as  he 
conceives  him,  —  the  man  of  the  future,  intensely 
American,  but  in  the  broadest  sense  human  and 
cosmopolitan;  he  is  to  project  him  on  a  scale  large 
enough  for  all  uses  and  conditions,  ignoring  the 
feudal  and  aristocratic  types  which  have  for  the 
most  part  dominated  literature,  and  matching  them 
with  a  type  more  copious  in  friendship,  charity, 
sympathy,  religion,  candor,  and  of  equal  egoism  and 
power. 

It  is  to  exploit  and  enforce  and  illustrate  this 
type  or  character  that  "  Leaves  of  Grass  "  is  writ 
ten.  The  poems  are  the  drama  of  this  new  demo 
cratic  man.  This  type  Whitman  finds  in  himself. 
He  does  not  have  to  create  it  as  Shakespeare  did 


HIS  RELATION  TO  LIFE  AND  MORALS       x. 

Hamlet  or  Lear;  he  has  only  to  discover  it  in  him 
self.  He  is  it  and  he  gives  it  free  utterance.  His 
work  is,  therefore,  as  he  says,  the  poem  of  himself, 
—  himself  written  large,  —  written  as  upon  the  face 
of  the  continent,  written  in  the  types  and  events 
he  finds  on  all  sides.  He  sees  himself  in  all  men, 
the  bad  as  well  as  the  good,  and  he  sees  all  men  in 
himself.  All  the  stupendous  claims  he  makes  for 
himself  he  makes  for  others.  His  egotism  is  vica 
rious  and  embraces  the  world.  It  is  not  the  private 
individual  Walt  Whitman  that  makes  these  stupen 
dous  claims  for  himself ;  it  is  Walt  Whitman  as  the 
spokesman  of  the  genius  of  American  democracy. 
He  is  not  to  discuss  a  question.  He  is  to  outline 
a  character,  he  is  to  incarnate  a  principle.  The 
essayist  or  philosopher  may  discuss  the  value  of  any 
given  idea,  —  may  talk  about  it ;  the  creative  artist 
alone  can  give  us  the  thing  itself,  the  concrete  flesh- 
and-blood  reality.  Whitman  is  not  only  to  make 
this  survey,  to  launch  this  criticism;  he  is  to  em 
body  it  in  a  living  human  personality,  and  enable 
us  to  see  the  world  of  man  and  morals  through  its 
eyes.  What  with  the  scientist,  the  philosopher,  is 
thought,  must  be  emotion  and  passion  with  him. 

Whitman  promises  that  we  shall  share  with  him 
"two  greatnesses,  and  a  third  one  rising  inclusive 
and  more  resplendent, "  — 

4<  The  greatness  of  Love  and  Democracy  and  the  greatness  of 
Religion"  — 

not  merely  as  ideas,  but  as  living  impulses.  He  is 
to  show  the  spirit  of  absolute,  impartial  nature, 


_^rtf  WHITMAN 

incarnated  in  a  human  being,  imbued  with  love, 
democracy,  and  religion,  moving  amid  the  scenes 
and  events  of  the  New  World,  sounding  all  the 
joys  and  abandonments  of  life,  and  re-reading  the 
oracles  from  the  American  point  of  view.  And 
the  utterance  launched  forth  is  to  be  imbued  with 
poetic  passion. . 

Whitman  always  aims  at  a  complete  human  syn 
thesis,  and  leaves  his  reader  to  make  of  it  what  he 
can.  It  is  not  for  the  poet  to  qualify  and  explain. 
*  He  seeks  to  reproduce  his  whole  nature  in  a  book, 
—  reproduce  it  with  all  its  contradictions  and  car 
nalities,  the  good  and  the  bad,  the  coarse  and  the 
fine,  the  body  and  the  soul,  —  to  give  free  swing  to 
himself,  trusting  to  natural  checks  and  compensa 
tions  to  ensure  a  good  result  at  last,  but  not  at  all 
disturbed  if  you  find  parts  of  it  bad  as  in  creation 
itself. 

His  method  being  that  of  the  poet,  and  not  that 
of  the  moralist  or  preacher,  how  shall  he  sort  and 
sift,  culling  this  virtue  and  that,  giving  parts  and 
fragments  instead  of  the  entire  man?  He  must 
give  all,  not  abstractly,  but  concretely,  syntheti 
cally. 

To  a  common  prostitute  Whitman  says :  — 

"  Not  till  the  sun  excludes  you  do  I  exclude  you  ; 
Not  till  the  waters  refuse  to  glisten  for  you,  and  the  leaves  to  rustle 
for  you,  do  my  words  refuse  to  glisten  and  rustle  for  you." 

We  are  housed  in  social  usages  and  laws,  we  are 
sheltered  and  warmed  and  comforted  by  conventions 
and  institutions  and  numberless  traditions;  their 


HIS   RELATION   TO  LIFE   AND   MORALS       177 

value  no  one  disputes.  But  for  purposes  of  his 
own  Whitman  ignores  them  all;  he  lets  in  upon 
us  the  free  and  maybe  raw  air  of  the  great  out- 
of-doors  of  absolute  nature;  his  standards  are  not 
found  inside  of  any  four  walls;  he  contemplates 
life,  and  would  quicken  it  in  its  fundamentals ;  his 
survey  is  from  a  plane  whence  our  arts  and  refine 
ments  and  petty  distinctions  disappear.  He  sees 
the  evil  of  the  world  no  less  necessary  than  the  good ; 
he  sees  death  as  a  part  of  life  itself;  he  sees  the 
body  and  the  soul  as  one;  he  sees  the  spiritual 
always  issuing  from  the  material;  he  sees  not  one 
result  at  last  lamentable  in  the  universe. 

IV 

Unless,  as  I  have  already  said,  we  allow  Whit 
man  to  be  a  law  unto  himself,  we  can  make  little  of 
him;  unless  we  place  ourselves  at  his  absolute  point  v 
of  view,  his  work  is  an  offense  and  without  mean 
ing.  The  only  question  is,  Has  he  a  law,  has  he 
a  steady  and  rational  point  of  view,  is  his  work 
a  consistent  and  well-organized  whole  ?  Ask  your 
self,  What  is  the  point  of  view  of  absolute,  uncom 
promising  science?  It  is  that  creation  is  all  good 
and  sound ;  things  are  as  they  should  be  or  must  be ; 
there  are  no  conceivable  failures;  there  is  no  evil 
in  the  final  analysis,  or,  if  there  is,  it  is  necessary, 
and  plays  its  part  also;  there  is  no  more  beginning 
nor  ending  than  there  is  now,  no  more  heaven  or 
hell  than  we  find  or  make  here :  — 

"  Did  you  guess  the  celestial  laws  are  yet  to  be  work'd  over  and 
rectified?" 


178  WHITMAN 

It  has  been  urged  that  Whitman  violates  his  own 
canon  of  the  excellence  of  nature.  But  what  he 
violates  is  more  a  secondary  or  acquired  nature. 
He  violates  our  social  conventions  and  instincts,  he 
exposes  what  we  cover  up;  but  'the  spirit  of  his 
undertaking  demanded  this  of  him.  Remember 
that  at  all  hazards  Jhe  is  to  let  nature  —  absolute 
nature  —  speak;  that  he  is  to  be  the  poet  of  the 
body  as  well  as  of  the  soul,  and  that  no  part  of  the 
body  of  a  man  or  woman,  "hearty  and  clean,"  is 
vile,  and  that  "none  shall  be  less  familiar  than  the 
rest." 

His  glory  is,  that  he  never  flinched  or  hesitated 
in  following  his  principle  to  its  logical  conclusions, 
— "  my  commission  obeying,  to  question  it  never 
daring. " 

It  was  an  heroic  sacrifice,  and  atones  for  the  sins 
of  us  all,  —  the  sins  of  perverting,  denying,  abusing 
the  most  sacred  and  important  organs  and  functions 
of  our  bodies. 


In  Whitman  we  find  the  most  complete  identi 
fication  of  the  man  with  the  subject.      He  always 
is,  or  becomes,  the  thing  he  portrays.      Not  merely 
does  he   portray  America,  —  he   speaks  out  of  the 
American  spirit,  the  spirit  that  has  broken  irrevo 
cably  with  the  past  and  turns  joyously  to  the  future; 
he  does  not  praise  equality,   he   illustrates  it;   he 
\   puts    himself    down    beside   the    lowest    and    most 
\i  despised  person,  and  calls  him  brother. 


HIS  RELATION  TO  LIFE  AND  MORALS       179 

"  You  felons  on  trial  in  courts, 

You  convicts  in  prison-cells,  you  sentenced  assassins  chain' d  and 

handcufFd  with  iron, 

"Who  am  I  too  that  I  am  not  on  trial  or  in  prison  ? 
Me  ruthless  and  devilish  as  any,  that  my  wrists  are  not  chain'd 

with  iron,  or  my  ankles  with  iron  ?  " 

He  does  not  give  a  little  charity,  he  gives  him 
self  as  freely  as  the  clouds  give  rain,  or  the  sun  gives 
light;  he  does  not  write  a  treatise  on  democracy,  he 
applies  the  democratic  spirit  to  everything  in  heaven 
and  on  earth,  and  redistributes  the  prizes  from  its 
points  of  view;  he  does  not,  except  very  briefly, 
sing  the  praises  of  science,  but  he  launches  his  poems  v 
always  from  the  scientific  view  of  the  world,  in* 
contradistinction  to  the  old  theological  and  myth 
ical  point  of  view.  It  is  always  the  example,  it 
is  always  the  thing  itself,  he  gives  us.  Few  pre 
cepts,  no  sermon,  no  reproof.  Does  he  praise  can-  ^ 
dor  ?  No,  he  is  candor ;  he  confesses  to  everything ; 
he  shows  us  the  inmost  working  of  his  mind.  We 
know  him  better  than  we  know  our  nearest  friends. 
Does  he  exalt  the  pride  of  man  in  himself,  or  ego 
ism?  Again  he  illustrates  it:  he  is  egoism;  he 
makes  the  whole  universe  revolve  around  himself; 
he  never  for  a  moment  goes  out  of  himself;  he  does 
not  seek  a  theme;  he  is  the  theme.  His  egocentric 
method  of  treatment  is  what  characterizes  him  as  an 
artist.  He  elaborates  no  theme,  he  builds  nothing, 
he  carves  nothing,  but  makes  himself  a  source  and 
centre  of  pulsing,  vital  energy.  Wave  after  wave 
radiates  from  him.  What  we  see  and  get  always  is 
Walt  Whitman.  Our  attention  is  never  fixed  upon 
the  writer,  but  always  upon  the  man. 


180  WHITMAN 

Of  course  this  method  of  Whitman  of  becoming 
one  with  his  subject,  and  speaking  out  of  it,  is 
always  the  method  of  the  creative  artist.  It  is  this 
that  distinguishes  the  artist  from  the  mere  thinker 
or  prose-writer.  The  latter  tells  us  about  a  thing; 
the  former  gives  us  the  thing,  or  the  spirit  of  the 
thing  itself. 

If  Whitman  had  put  his  criticism  of  our  time 
and  civilization  in  an  argument  or  essay,  the  world 
would  have  received  it  very  differently.  As  an  in 
tellectual  statement  or  proposition,  we  could  have 
played  with  it  and  tossed  it  about  as  a  ball  in  a 
game  of  shuttlecock,  and  dropped  it  when  we  tired 
of  it,  as  we  do  other  criticism.  But  he  gave  it  to 
us  as  a  man,  as  a  personality,  and  we  find  it  too 
strong  for  us.  It  is  easier  to  deal  with  a  theory 
than  with  the  concrete  reality.  A  man  is  a  sum 
mons  and  a  challenge,  and  will  not  be  easily  put 
aside. 

The  great  philosophical  poets,  like  Lucretius,  try 
to  solve  the  riddles.  Whitman's  aim  is  only  to 
thrust  the  riddles  before  you,  to  give  you  a  new 
sense  of  them,  and  start  the  game  afresh.  He 
knows  what  a  complex,  contradictory  thing  the 
universe  is,  and  that  the  most  any  poet  can  do  is 
to  break  the  old  firmament  up  into  new  forms. 
To  put  his  arms  around  it?  No.  Put  your  arms 
around  your  fellow-man,  and  then  you  have  encom 
passed  it  as  nearly  as  mortal  can  do. 


HIS  RELATION  TO  LIFE   AND  MORALS       181 


VI 

Whitman's  attraction  toward  the  common  people 
was  real.  There  is  one  thing  that  makes  every-day 
humanity,  the  great,  toiling,  unlettered  masses,  for 
ever  welcome  to  men  who  unite  great  imagination 
with  broad  sympathies,  —  they  give  a  sense  of  real 
ity  ;  they  refresh,  as  nature  always  refreshes.  There 
is  a  tang  and  a  sting  to  the  native,  the  spontane 
ous,  that  the  cultivated  rarely  has.  The  farmer, 
the  mechanic,  the  sailor,  the  soldier,  savor  of  the 
primal  and  the  hardy.  In  painting  his  own  por 
trait,  Whitman  makes  prominent  the  coarser,  unre 
fined  traits,  because  here  the  colors  are  fast,  —  here 
is  the  basis  of  all.  The'  careful  student  of  Whit 
man  will  surely  come  to  see  how  all  the  elements  of 
his  picture  —  his  pride,  his  candor,  his  democracy, 
his  sensuality,  his  coarseness,  —  finally  fit  together, 
and  correct  and  offset  each  other  and  make  a  perfect 
unity. 

No  poet  is  so  easily  caricatured  and  turned  into 
ridicule  as  Whitman.  He  is  deficient  in  humor, 
and  hence,  like  the  Biblical  writers,  is  sometimes 
on  the  verge  of  the  grotesque  without  knowing  it. 
The  sense  of  the  ridiculous  has  been  enormously 
stimulated  and  developed  in  the  modern  mind,  and 
—  what  is  to  be  regretted  —  it  has  been  mostly  at 
the  expense  of  the  sense  of  awe  and  reverence.  We 
"  poke  fun  "  at  everything  in  this  country ;  to  what 
ever  approaches  the  verge  of  the  ridiculous  we  give 
a  push  and  topple  it  over.  The  fear  which  all 


182  WHITMAN 

Americans  have  before  their  eyes,  and  which  is 
much  stronger  than  the  fear  of  purgatory,  is  the 
fear  of  appearing  ridiculous.  We  curb  and  check 
any  eccentricity  or  marked  individuality  of  man 
ners  or  dress,  lest  we  expose  ourselves  to  the  shafts 
of  ridicule.  Emerson  said  he  had  heard  with  ad 
miring  submission  the  remark  of  a  lady  who  de 
clared  that  the  sense  of  being  perfectly  well  dressed 
gave  a  feeling  of  inward  tranquillity  which  religion 
was  powerless  to  bestow;  and  what  ranks  before 
religion  with  us  as  a  people  is  being  in  the  mode, 
and  writing  our  verse  and  cutting  our  coats  in  the 
approved  style.  Pride  of  the  eye,  a  keen  sense  of 
the  proprieties  and  the  conventionalities,  and  a 
morbid  feeling  for  the  ridiculous,  would  have  been 
death  to  Whitman's  undertaking.  He  would  have 
faltered,  or  betrayed  self-consciousness.  He  cer 
tainly  never  could  have  spoken  with  that  elemental 
aplomb  and  indifference  which  is  so  marked  a  fea 
ture  of  his  work.  Any  hesitation,  any  knuckling, 
would  have  been  his  ruin.  We  should  have  seen 
he  was  not  entirely  serious,  and  should  have  laughed 
at  him.  We  laugh  now  only  for  a  moment;  the 
spell  of  his  earnestness  and  power  is  soon  upon  us. 

VII 

Thoreau  considered  Whitman's  "  Leaves  "  worth 
all  the  sermons  in  the  country  for  preaching;  and 
yet  few  poets  have  assumed  so  little  the  function 
of  the  preacher.  His  great  cure-all  is  love;  he 
gives  himself  instead  of  a  sermon.  His  faith  in 


HIS   RELATION  TO  LIFE  AND  MORALS       183 

the  remedial  power  of  affection,  comradeship,  is 
truly  Christ- like.  Lover  of  sinners  is  also  his  desig 
nation.  The  reproof  is  always  indirect  or  implied. 
He  brings  to  bear  character  rather  than  precept. 
He  helps  you  as  health,  as  nature,  as  fresh  air,  pure 
water  help.  He  says  to  you :  — 

"The  mockeries  are  not  you; 

Underneath  them,  and  within  them,  I  see  you  lurk; 

I  pursue  you  where  none  else  has  pursued  you  : 

Silence,  the  desk,  the  flippant  expression,  the  night,  the  accus 
tomed  routine,  —  if  these  conceal  you  from  others,  or  from 
yourself,  they  do  not  conceal  you  from  me. 

The  shaved  face,  the  unsteady  eye,  the  impure  complexion,  —  if 
these  balk  others,  they  do  not  balk  me. 

The  pert  apparel,  the  deformed  attitude,  drunkenness,  greed, 
premature  death,  — all  these  I  part  aside. 

I  track  through  your  windings  and  turnings,  —  I  come  upon  you 
where  you  thought  eye  should  never  come  upon  you." 

Whitman  said,  in  the  now  famous  preface  of 
1855,  that  "the  greatest  poet  does  not  moralize, 
or  make  applications  of  morals,  —  he  knows  the 
soul."  There  is  no  preaching  or  reproof  in  the 
"Leaves." 

"I  sit  and  look  out  upon  all  the  sorrows  of  the  world,  and  upon- 

all  oppression  and  shame  ; 
I  hear  secret  convulsive  sobs  from  young  men,  at  anguish  with 

themselves,  remorseful  after  deeds  done  ; 
I  see,  in  low  life,  the  mother  misused  by  her  children,  dying, 

neglected,  gaunt,  desperate  ; 
I  see  the  wife  misused  by  her  husband ;   I  see  the  treacherous 

seducer  of  the  young  woman  ; 
I  mark  the  ranklings  of  jealousy  and  unrequited  love,  attempted 

to  be  hid,  —  I  see  these  sights  on  the  earth, 
I  see  the  workings  of  battle,  pestilence,  tyranny  ;  I  see  martyrs 

and  prisoners, 
I  observe  a  famine  at  sea,  — I  observe  the  sailors  casting  lots  who 

shall  be  killed,  to  preserve  the  lives  of  the  rest, 


184  WHITMAN 

I  observe  the  slights  and  degradations  cast  by  arrogant  persons 
upon  laborers,  the  poor,  and  upon  negroes,  and  the  like ; 

All  these  —  all  the  meanness  and  agouy  without  end  I  sitting  look 
out  upon, 

See,  hear,  and  am  silent." 

Only  once  does  he  shame  and  rebuke  the  offender ; 
then  he  holds  up  to  him  "a  hand-mirror." 

"  Hold  it  up  sternly  !    See  this  it  sends  back  !  (who  is  it?   is  it 

you?) 

Outside  fair  costume,  —  within,  ashes  and  filth. 
No  more  a  flashing  eye,  —  no  more  a  sonorous  voice  or  springy 

step, 

Now  some  slave's  eye,  voice,  hands,  step, 
A  drunkard's  breath,  unwholesome   eater's  face,  venerealee's 

flesh, 

Lungs  rotting  away  piecemeal,  stomach  sour  and  cankerous, 
Joints  rheumatic,  bowels  clogged  with  abomination, 
Blood  circulating  dark  and  poisonous  streams, 
Words  babble,  hearing  and  touch  callous, 
No  brain,  no  heart  left,  no  magnetism  of  sex  ; 
Such,  from  one  look  in  this  looking-glass  ere  you  go  hence, 
Such  a  result  so  soon  —  and  from  such  a  beginning  ! 

The  poet's  way  is  so  different  from  the  moralist's 
way !  The  poet  confesses  all,  loves  all,  —  has  no 
preferences.  He  is  moral  only  in  his  results.  We 
ask  ourselves,  Does  he  breathe  the  air  of  health? 
Can  he  stand  the  test  of  nature?  Is  he  tonic  and 
inspiring?  That  he  shocks  us  is  nothing.  The 
first  touch  of  the  sea  is  a  shock.  Does  he  toughen 
us,  does  he  help  make  arterial  blood  ? 

All  that  men  do  and  are  guilty  of  attracts  him. 
Their  vices  and  excesses,  —  he  would  make  these  his 
own  also.  He  is  jealous  lest  he  be  thought  better 
than  other  men,  —  lest  he  seem  to  stand  apart  from 
even  criminals  and  offenders.  When  the  passion 


HIS  RELATION   TO  LIFE  AND   MORALS       185 

for  human  brotherhood  is  upon  him,  he  is  balked  by 
nothing;  he  goes  down  into  the  social  mire  to  find 
his  lovers  and  equals.  In  the  pride  of  our  morality 
and  civic  well-being,  this  phase  of  his  work  shocks 
us;  but  there  are  moods  when  the  soul  says  it  is 
good,  and  we  rejoice  in  the  strong  man  that  can 
do  it. 

The  restrictions,  denials,  and  safeguards  put  upon 
us  by  the  social  order,  and  the  dictates  of  worldly 
prudence,  fall  only  before  a  still  more  fervid  human 
ism,  or  a  still  more  vehement  love. 

The  vital  question  is,  Where  does  he  leave  us? 
On  firmer  ground,  or  in  the  mire?  Depleted  and 
enervated,  or  full  and  joyous?  In  the  gloom  of 
pessimism,  or  in  the  sunlight  of  its  opposite  ?  — 

"So  long! 

I  announce  a  man  or  woman  coming  —  perhaps  you  are  the  one  ; 
I  announce  a  great  individual,  fluid  as  Nature,  chaste,  affection 
ate,  compassionate,  fully  armed. 

"So  long! 

I  announce  a  life  that  shall  be  copious,  vehement,  spiritual,  hold, 
And  I  announce  an  old  age  that  shall  lightly  and  joyfully  meet 
its  translation. 

"I    announce   myriads  of  youths,  beautiful,  gigantic,   sweet- 
blooded  ; 
I  announce  a  race  of  splendid  and  savage  old  men." 

There  is  no  contradiction  here.  The  poet  sounds 
all  the  experiences  of  life,  and  he  gives  out  the  true 
note  at  last. 

"  No  specification  is  necessary,  —  all  that  a  male  or  female  does, 
that  is  vigoi*ous,  benevolent,  clean,  is  so  much  profit  to 
him  or  her,  in  the  unshakable  order  of  the  universe,  and 
through  the  whole  scope  of  it  forever." 


186  WHITMAN 


VIII 

Nothing  but  the  most  uncompromising  religious 
purpose  can  justify  certain  things  in  the  "Leaves;" 
nothing  but  the  most  buoyant  and  pervasive  spirit 
uality  can  justify  its  overwhelming  materiality; 
nothing  but  the  most  creative  imagination  can  offset 
its  tremendous  realism;  nothing  but  the  note  of 
universal  brotherhood  can  atone  for  its  vehement 
Americanism;  nothing  but  the  primal  spirit  of 
poesy  itself  can  make  amends  for  this  open  flouting 
of  the  routine  poetic,  and  this  endless  procession 
before  us  of  the  common  and  the  familiar. 

ix  v 

v  Whitman  loved  the  word  "unrefined."  It  was 
one  of  the  words  he  would  have  us  apply  to  him 
self.  He  was  unrefined,  as  the  air,  the  soil,  the 
water,  and  all  sweet  natural  things  are  unrefined 
(fine  but  not  refined).  He  applies  the  word  to  him 
self  two  or  three  times  in  the  course  of  his  poems. 
He  loved  the  words  sun-tan,  air-sweetness,  brawn, 
etc.  He  speaks  of  his  "savage  song,"  not  to  call 
forth  the  bards  of  the  past,  he  says,  but  to  invoke 
the  bards  of  the  future. 

"Have  I  sung  so  capricious  and  loud  my  savage  songs  ?  " 
The  thought  that  his  poems  might  help  contrib 
ute  to  the  production  of  a  "race  of  splendid  and 
savage  old  men  "  was  dear  to  him.      He  feared  the 
depleting  and  emasculating  effects  of  our  culture  and 

i  conventions.     The  decay   of  maternity  and  pater- 


\ 


HIS  RELATION  TO   LIFE   AND  MORALS       187 

nity  in  this  country,  the  falling  off  of  the  native 
populations,  were  facts  full  of  evil  omen.  His 
ideal  of  manly  or  womanly  character  is  rich  in  all 
the  purely  human  qualities  and  attributes ;  rich  in 
sex,  in  sympathy,  in  temperament;  physiologically 
sound  and  clean,  as  well  as  mentally  and  morally  so. 

"Fear  grace,  fear  delicatessej 

Fear  the  mellow-sweet,  the  sucking  of  honey-juice : 
Beware  the  advancing  mortal  ripening  of  nature! 
Beware  what  precedes  the  decay  of  the  ruggedness  of  states  and 
men." 

He  was  himself  the  savage  old  man  he  invoked. 
It  was  no  part  of  his  plan  to  preach,  in  refined  and 
euphonious    terms,    hygiene  and  the  value   of  the 
natural  man,,  but  to  project  into  literature  the  thing 
itself,   to  exploi.t  a  character  coarse  as  well  as  fine, 
and  to  imbue  his  poems  with  a  physiological  qual 
ity  as  well  as  a  psychological  and  intellectual. 
"I  will  scatter  the  new  roughness  and  gladness  among  them." 
He  says  to  the  pale,  impotent  victim  of  over-refine 
ment,  with  intentional  rudeness, 

"Open  your  scarf 'd  chops  till  I  blow  grit  within  you." 


One  of  the  key- words  to  Whitman  both  as  a  man 
and  a  poet  is  the  word  "  composite."  He  was  proba 
bly  the  most  composite  man  this  century  has  pro 
duced,  and  in  this  respect  at  least  is  representative 
of  the  American  of  the  future,  who  must  be  the 
result  of  the  blending  of  more  diverse  racial  ele 
ments  than  any  man  of  history.  He  seems  to  have 


188  WHITMAN 

had  an  intuition  of  his  composite   character  when 
he  said  in  his  first  poem :  — 

"I  am  large,  —  I  contain  multitudes." 

The  London  correspondent  of  the  "New  York 
Tribune,"  in  reluctantly  conceding  at  the  time  of 
the  poet's  death  something  to  the  British  admira 
tion  of  him,  said  he  was  "rich  in  temperament." 
The  phrase  is  well  chosen.  An  English  expert  on 
the  subject  of  temperament,  who  visited  Whitman 
some  years  ago,  said  he  had  all  four  temperaments, 
the  sanguine,  the  nervous,  the  melancholic,  and  the 
lymphatic,  while  most  persons  have  but  two  temper 
aments,  and  rarely  three. 

It  was  probably  the  composite  character  of  Whit 
man  that  caused  him  to  attract  such  diverse  and 
opposite  types  of  men,  —  scholars  and  workingmen, 
lawyers,  doctors,  scientists,  and  men  of  the  world, 

—  and-  that  made  him  personally  such  a  puzzle  to 
most  people,  —  so  impossible  to  classify.      On  the 
street  the  promenaders  would  turn  and  look  after 
him,  and  I  have  often  heard  them  ask  each  other, 
"  What  man  was  that  ?  "     He  has  often  been  taken 
for  a  doctor,  and  during  his  services  in  the  army 
hospitals  various  myths  were  floating  about  concern 
ing  him.     Now  he  was  a  benevolent  Catholic  priest, 

—  then  some  unknown  army  general,  or  retired  sea 
captain;  at  one  time  he  was  reputed  to  be  one  of 
the  owners  of  the  Cunard  line  of  steamers.      To  be 
taken  for  a  Californian  was  common.      One  recalls 
the  composite  character  of  the  poet  whom  he  out 
lines  in  his  poems  (see  quotation,  page  159). 


HIS  RELATION  TO   LIFE   AND   MORALS       189 

The  book  is  as  composite  as  the  man.  It  is  all 
things  to  all  men;  it  lends  itself  to  a  multitude 
of  interpretations.  Every  earnest  reader  of  it  will 
find  some  clew  or  suggestion  by  the  aid  of  which 
he  fancies  he  can  unlock  the  whole  book,  but  in 
the  end  he  will  be  pretty  sure  to  discover  that  one 
key  is  not  enough.  To  one  critic,  his  book  is  the 
"hoarse  song  of  a  man,"  its  manly  and  masculine 
element  attracts  him;  to  another  he  is  the  poet  of 
joy,  to  another  the  poet  of  health,  to  still  another 
he  is  the  bard  of  personality;  others  read  him  as 
the  poet  of  nature,  or  the  poet  of  democracy.  His 
French  critic,  Gabriel  Sarrazin,  calls  him  an  apostle, 
—  the  apostle  of  the  idea  that  man  is  an  indivisible 
fragment  of  the  universal  Divinity. 

XI 

What  has  a  poet  of  Whitman's  aims  to  do  with 
decency  or  indecency,  with  modesty  or  immodesty  ? 
These  are  social  or  conventional  virtues;  he  repre 
sents  mainly  primary  qualities  and  forces.  Does 
life,  does  death,  does  nature,  respect  our  proprie 
ties,  our  conventional  veils  and  illusions?  Neither 
will  he.  He  will  strip  them  all  away.  He  will 
act  and  speak  as  if  all  things  in  the  universe  were 
equally  sacred  and  divine;  as  if  all  men  were  really 
his  brothers,  all  women  his  sisters;  as  if  all  parts 
of  the  human  body  were  equally  beautiful  and  won 
derful;  as  if  fatherhood  and  motherhood,  birth  and 
begetting,  were  sacred  acts.  Of  course  it  is  easy  to  see 
that  this  course  will  speedily  bring  him  in  collision 


190  WHITMAN 

with  the  guardians  of  taste  and  social  morality. 
But  what  of  that?  He  professes  to  take  his  cue 
from  the  elemental  laws.  "I  reckon  I  behave  no 
more  proudly  than  the  level  I  plant  my  house  by." 
The  question  is,  Is  he  adequate,  is  he  man  enough, 
to  do  it?  Will  he  not  falter,  or  betray  self-con 
sciousness?  Will  he  be  true  to  his  ideal  through 
thick  and  thin?  The  social  gods  will  all  be  out 
raged,  but  that  is  less  to  him  than  the  candor  and 
directness  of  nature  in  whose  spirit  he  assumes  to 


Nothing  is  easier  than  to  convict  Walt  Whitman 
of  what  is  called  indecency;  he  laughs  indifferent 
when  you  have  done  so.  It  is  not  your  gods  that 
he  serves.  He  says  he  would  be  as  indifferent  of 
observation  as  the  trees  or  rocks.  And  it  is  here 
/that  we  must  look  for  his  justification,  upon  ethical 
/  rather  than  upon  the  grounds  of  conventional  art. 
He  has  taken  our  sins  upon  himself.  He  has  ap 
plied  to  the  morbid  sex  -  consciousness,  that  has 
eaten  so  deeply  into  our  social  system,  the  heroic 
treatment;  he  has  fairly  turned  it  naked  into  the 
street.  He  has  not  merely  in  words  denied  the 
inherent  vileness  of  sex;  he  has  denied  it  in  very 
deed.  We  should  not  have  taken  offense  had  he 
confined  himself  to  words,  —  had  he  said  sex  is 
pure,  the  body  is  as  clean  about  the  loins  as  about 
the  head;  but  being  an  artist,  a  creator,  and  not  a 
mere  thinker  or  preacher,  he  was  compelled  to  act, 
—  to  do  the  thing  instead  of  saying  it. 

The  same  in  other  matters.     Being  an  artist,  he 


HIS   RELATION   TO  LIFE  AND  MORALS        191 

could  not  merely  say  all  men  were  his  brothers;  he 
must  show  them  as  such.  If  their  weakness  and 
sins  are  his  also,  he  must  not  flinch  when  it  comes 
to  the  test;  he  must  make  his  words  good.  We 
may  be  shocked  at  the  fullness  and  minuteness  of 
the  specification,  but  that  is  no  concern  of  his;  he 
deals  with  the  concrete  and  not  with  the  abstract,  — 
fraternity  and  equality  as  a  reality,  not  as  a  senti 
ment. 

XII 

In  the  phase  in  which  we  are  now  considering 
him,  Whitman  appears  as  the  Adamic  man  re-born 
here  in  the  nineteenth  century,  or  with  science  and 
the  modern  added,  and  fully  and  fearlessly  embody 
ing  himself  in  a  poem.  It  is  stronger  than  we  can 
stand,  but  it  is  good  for  us,  and  one  of  these  days, 
or  one  of  these  centuries,  we  shall  be  able  to  stand 
it  and  enjoy  it. 

"To  the  garden  the  world  anew  ascending, 

Potent  mates,  daughters,  sons,  preluding, 

The  love,  the  life  of  their  bodies,  meaning  and  being, 

Curious,  here  behold  my  resurrection,  after  slumber, 

The  revolving  cycles,  in  their  wide  sweep,  having  brought  me 

again, 

Amorous,  mature  —  all  beautiful  to  me  —  all  wondrous, 
My  limbs,  and  the  quivering  fire  that  ever  plays  through  them, 

for  reasons  most  wondrous  ; 
Existing,  I  peer  and  penetrate  still, 
Content  with  the  present  —  content  with  the  past, 
By  my  side,  or  back  of  me,  Eve  following, 
Or  in  front,  and  I  following  her  just  the  same." 

The  critics  perpetually  misread  Whitman  because 
they  fail  to  see  this  essentially  composite  and  dra- 


192  WHITMAN 

matic  character  of  his  work,  —  that  it  is  not  the  song 
of  Walt  Whitman  the  private  individual,  but  of 
Walt  Whitman  as  representative  of,  and  speaking 
for,  all  types  and  conditions  of  men ;  in  fact,  that 
it  is  the  drama  of  a  new  democratic  personality,  a 
character  outlined  on  a  larger,  more  copious,  more 
vehement  scale  than  has  yet  appeared  in  the  world. 
The  germs  of  this  character  he  would  sow  broadcast 
over  the  land. 

In  this  drama  of  personality  the  poet  always 
identifies  himself  with  the  scene,  incident,  expe 
rience,  or  person  he  delineates,  or  for  whom  he 
speaks.  He  says  to  the  New  Englander,  or  to  the 
man  of  the  South  and  the  West,  "  I  depict  you  as 
myself."  In  the  same  way  he  depicts  offenders, 
roughs,  criminals,  and  low  and  despised  persons  as 
himself;  he  lays  claim  to  every  sin  of  omission  and 
commission  men  are  guilty  of,  because,  he  says, 
"the  germs  are  in  all  men."  Men  dare  not  tell 
their  faults.  He  will  make  them  all  his  own,  and 
then  tell  them;  there  shall  be  full  confession  for 
once. 

"If  you  become  degraded,  criminal,  ill,  then  I  become  so  for 

your  sake  ; 
If  you  remember  your  foolish  and  outlaw' d  deeds,  do  you  think 

I  cannot  remember  my  own  foolish  and  outlaw' d  deeds  ?  " 

It  will  not  do  to  read  this  poet,  or  any  great 
poet,  in  a  narrow  and  exacting  spirit.  As  Whit 
man  himself  says:  "The  messages  of  great  poems 
to  each  man  and  woman  are:  Come  to  us  on  equal 
terms,  only  then  can  you  understand  us." 


HIS   RELATION   TO   LIFE   AND   MORALS        193 

In  the  much  misunderstood  group  of  poems  called 
"  Children  of  Adam  "  the  poet  speaks  for  the  male 
generative  principle,  and  all  the  excesses  and  abuses 
that  grow  out  of  it  he  unblushingly  imputes  to 
himself.  What  men  have  done  and  still  do,  while 
under  the  intoxication  of  the  sexual  passion,  he 
does,  he  makes  it  all  his  own  experience. 

That  we  have  here  a  revelation  of  his  own  per 
sonal  taste  and  experiences  may  or  may  not  be  the 
case,  but  we  have  no  more  right  to  assume  it  than 
we  have  to  assume  that  all  other  poets  speak  from 
experience  when  they  use  the  first  person  singular. 
When  John  Brown  mounted  the  scaffold  in  Vir 
ginia,  in  1860,  the  poet  says :  — 

"  I  was  at  hand,  silent  I  stood  with  teeth  shut  close,  I  watch'd, 
I  stood  very  near  you,  old  man,  when  cool  and  indifferent,  but 

trembling    with    age    and  your  unheal'd  wounds,    you 

mounted  the  scaffold,"  — 

very  near  him  he  stood  in  spirit;  very  near  him  he 
stood  in  the  person  of  others,  but  not  in  his  own 
proper  person. 

If  we  take  this  poet  literally,  we  shall  believe  he 
has  been  in  California  and  Oregon ;  that  he  has  set 
foot  in  every  city  on  the  continent;  that  he  grew 
up  in  Virginia ;  that  every  Southern  State  has  been 
by  turns  his  home;  that  he  has  been  a  soldier,  a 
sailor,  a  miner;  that  he  has  lived  in  Dakota's  woods, 
his  "  diet  meat,  his  drink  from  the  spring ;  "  that  he 
has  lived  on  the  plains  with  hunters  and  ranch 
men,  etc.  He  lays  claim  to  all  these  characters,  all 
these  experiences,  because  what  others  do,  what 


194  WHITMAN 

others  assume,  or  suffer,  or  enjoy,  that  he  appropri 
ates  to  himself. 

"  I  am  the  hounded  slave,  I  wince  at  the  bite  of  the  dogs, 
Hell  and  despair  are  upon  me,  crack  and  again  crack  the  marks 
men, 
I  clutch  the  rails  of  the  fence,  my  gore  dribs,  thinned  with  the 

ooze  of  my  skin, 
I  fall  on  the  weeds  and  stones, 
The  riders  spur  their  unwilling  horses,  haul  close, 
Taunt  my  dizzy  ears,  and  beat  me  violently  over  the  head  with 
whipstocks. 

"  Agonies  are  one  of  my  changes  of  garments, 
I  do  not  ask  the  wounded  person  how  he  feels  —  I  myself  be 
come  the  wounded  person, 
My  hurts  turn  livid  upon  me  as  I  lean  on  a  cane  and  observe. 

"I  become  any  presence  or  truth  of  humanity  here, 
See  myself  in  prison  shaped  like  another  man, 
And  feel  the  dull  unintermitted  pain. 

"  For  me  the  keepers  of  convicts  shoulder  their  carbines  and  keep 
watch, 

It  is  I  let  out  in  the  morning  and  barred  at  night. 

Not  a  mutineer  walks  hand-cuffed  to  the  jail,  but  I  am  hand 
cuffed  to  him  and  walk  by  his  side." 


XIII 

It  is  charged  against  Whitman  that  he  does  not 
celebrate  love  at  all,  and  very  justly.  He  had  no 
purpose  to  celebrate  the  sentiment  of  love.  Litera 
ture  is  vastly  overloaded  with  this  element  already. 
He  celebrates  fatherhood  and  motherhood,  and  the 
need  of  well-begotten,  physiologically  well- begotten, 
offspring.  Of  that  veiled  prurient  suggestion  which 
readers  so  delight  in  —  of  "bosoms  mutinously 
fair,"  and  "the  soul-lingering  loops  of  perfumed 


HIS   RELATION   TO  LIFE  AND   MORALS        195 

hair,"  as  one  of  our  latest  poets  puts  it  —  there  is/ 
no  hint  in  his  volume.  He  would  have  fallen  from! 
grace  the  moment  he  had  attempted  such  a  thing. ) 
Any  trifling  or  dalliance  on  his  part  would  have 
heen  his  ruin.  Love  as  a  sentiment  has  fairly  run 
riot  in  literature.  From  Whitman's  point  of  view, 
it  would  have  been  positively  immoral  for  him  either 
to  have  vied  with  the  lascivious  poets  in  painting 
it  as  the  forbidden,  or  with  the  sentimental  poets 
in  depicting  it  as  a  charm.  /Woman  with  him  is 
always  the  mate  and  equal  of  the  man,  never  his 
plaything.  J 

Whitman  is  seldom  or  never  the  poet  of  a  sen 
timent,  at  least  of  the  domestic  and  social  senti 
ments.  His  is  more  the  voice  of  the  eternal,  abys 
mal  man. 

I  The  home,  the  fireside,  the  domestic  allurements,  ^ 
I  are  not  in  him;  love,  as  we  find  it  in  other  poets, 
is  not  in  him;  the  idyllic,  except  in  touches  here 
and  there,  is  not  in  him;  the  choice,  the  finished, 
the  perfumed,  the  romantic,  the  charm  of  art  and 
the  delight  of  form,  are  not  to  be  looked  for  in  his 
pages.  *}  The  cosmic  takes  the  place  of  the  idyl 
lic;  the  begetter,  the  Adamic  man,  takes  the  place 
of  the  lover;  patriotism  takes  the  place  of  family 
affection;  charity  takes  the  place  of  piety;  love 
of  kind  is  more  than  love  of  neighbor;  the  poet 
and  the  artist  are  swallowed  up  in  the  seer  and  the 
prophet. 

The  poet  evidently  aimed  to  put  in  his  sex  poems 
a  rank  and  healthful  animality,  and  to  make  them 


196  WHITMAN 

as  frank  as  the  shedding  of  pollen  by  the  trees, 
strong  even  to  the  point  of  offense.  He  could  not 
make  it  pleasing,  a  sweet  morsel  to  be  rolled  under 
the  tongue;  that  would  have  been  levity  and  sin, 
as  in  Byron  and  the  other  poets.  It  must  be  direct 
and  rank,  healthfully  so.  The  courage  that  did  it, 
and  showed  no  wavering  or  self-consciousness,  was 
more  than  human.  Man  is  a  begetter.  How  shall 
a  poet  in  our  day  and  land  treat  this  fact?  With 
levity  and  by  throwing  over  it  the  lure  of  the  for 
bidden,  the  attraction  of  the  erotic?  That  is  one 
way,  the  way  of  nearly  all  the  poets  of  the  past. 
But  that  is  not  Whitman's  way.  He  would  sooner 
be  bestial  than  Byronic,  he  would  sooner  shock  by 
his  frankness  than  inflame  by  his  suggestion.  And 
this  in  the  interest  of  health  and  longevity,  not  in 
the  interest  of  a  prurient  and  effeminate  "art.'7  In 
these  poems  Whitman  for  a  moment  emphasizes  sex, 
the  need  of  sex,  and  the  power  of  sex.  "All  were 
lacking  if  sex  were  lacking."  He  says  to  men  and 
women,  Here  is  where  you  live  after  all,  here  is  the 
seat  of  empire.  You  are  at  the  top  of  your  condi 
tion  when  you  are  fullest  and  sanest  there.  Fearful 
consequences  follow  any  corrupting  or  abusing  or 
perverting  of  sex.  The  poet  stands  in  the  garden 
of  the  world  naked  and  not  ashamed.  It  is  a  great 
comfort  that  he  could  do  it  in  this  age  of  hectic  lust 
and  Swinburnian  impotence,  —  that  he  could  do  it 
and  not  be  ridiculous.  To  have  done  it  without 
offense  would  have  been  proof  that  he  had  failed 
utterly.  Let  us  be  shocked;  it  is  a  wholesome 


HIS  RELATION  TO  LIFE  AND   MORALS        197 

shock,  like  the  douse  of  the  sea,  or  the  buffet  of 
the  wind.      We  shall  be  all  the  better  for  it  by  and 

by. 

XIV 

The  lover  of  Whitman  comes  inevitably  to  asso 
ciate  him  with  character  and  personal  qualities.  I 
sometimes  meet  women  whom  I  say  are  of  the 
Whitman  type  —  the  kind  of  woman  he  invoked 
and  predicted.  They  bear  children,  and  are  not 
ashamed ;  motherhood  is  their  pride  and  their  joy : 
they  are  cheerful,  tolerant,  friendly,  think  no  evil, 
meet  high  and  low  on  equal  terms;  they  walk,  row, 
climb  mountains;  they  reach  forth  into  the  actual 
world  of  questions  and  events,  open-minded,  sympa 
thetic,  frank,  natural,  good-natured;  the  mates  and 
companions  of  their  husbands,  keeping  pace  with 
them  in  all  matters ;  home-makers,  but  larger  than 
home,  considerate,  forgiving,  unceremonious,  —  in 
short,  the  large,  fresh,  wholesome  open-air  natures 
whose  ideal  so  completely  possessed  Walt  Whitman. 

A  British  critic  wisely  says  the  gift  of  Whitman 
to  us  is  the  gift  of  life  rather  than  of  literature,  but 
it  is  the  gift  of  life  through  literature.  Indeed, 
Whitman  means  a  life  as  much  as  Christianity 
means  a  life.  He  says :  — 

I"  Writing  and  talk  do  not  prove  me."     J 

Nothing    but    the    test    of    reality    finally    proves 
him :  — 

"  The  proof  of  the  poet  shall  be  sternly  deferr'd  till  his  country 
has  absorbed  him  as  affectionately  as  he  has  absorbed  it." 


198  WHITMAN 

The  proof  of  Whitman  shall  be  deferred  till  he 
has  borne  fruit  in  actual,  concrete  life. 

He  knew  that  merely  intellectual  and  artistic 
tests  did  not  settle  matters  in  his  case,  or  that 
we  would  not  reach  his  final  value  by  making  a 
dead-set  at  him  through  the  purely  aesthetic  facul 
ties.  Is  he  animating  to  life  itself?  Can  we 
absorb  and  assimilate  him?  Does  he  nourish  the 
manly  and  heroic  virtues  ?  Does  he  make  us  more 
religious,  more  tolerant,  more  charitable,  more  can 
did,  more  self-reliant  ?  If  not,  he  fails  of  his  chief 
end.  It  is  doubtful  if  the  purely  scholarly  and 
literary  poets,  like  Milton,  say,  or  like  our  own  Poe, 
are  ever  absorbed  in  the  sense  above  implied;  while 
there  is  little  doubt  that  poets  like  Homer,  like 
Shakespeare,  are  absorbed  and  modify  a  people's 
manners  and  ideals.  Only  that  which  we  love  affects 
our  lives.  Our  admiration  for  art  and  literature  as 
such  is  something  entirely  outside  the  sources  of 
character  and  power  of  action. 

Whitman  identifies?  himself  with  our  lives.  We 
associate  him  with  reality,  with  days,  scenes,  per 
sons,  events.  The  youth  who  reads  Poe  or  Lowell 
wants  to  be  a  scholar,  a  wit,  a  poet,  a  writer;  the 
youth  who  reads  Whitman  wants  to  be  a  man,  and 
to  get  at  the  i$eaning  and  value  of  life.  Our 
author's  bent  towards  real  things,  real  men  and 
women,  and  his  power  to  feed  and  foster  person 
ality,  are  unmistakable. 

Life,  reality,  alone  proves  him;  a  saner  and  more 
robust  fatherhood  and  motherhood,  more  practical 


HIS  RELATION  TO  LIFE   AND  MORALS        199 

democracy,  more  charity,  more  love,  more  comrade 
ship,  more  social  equality,  more  robust  ideals  of 
womanly  and  manly  character,  prove  him.  When 
we  are  more  tolerant  and  patient  and  long- suffering, 
when  the  strain  of  our  worldly,  commercial  spirit 
relaxes,  then  is  he  justified.  Whitman  means  a 
letting-up  of  the  strain  all  along  the  line,  —  less 
hurry,  less  greed,  less  rivalry,  more  leisure,  more 
charity,  more  fraternalism  and  altruism,  more  reli 
gion,  less  formality  and  convention. 

"When  America  does  what  was  promised, 

When  each  part  is  peopled  with  free  people, 

When  there  is  no  city  on  earth  to  lead  my  city,  the  city  of  young 

men,  the  Mannahatta  city  —  but  when  the   Mannahatta 

leads  all  the  cities  of  the  earth, 

When  there  are  plentiful  athletic  bards,  inland  and  seaboard, 
When  through  these  States  walk  a  hundred  millions  of  superb 

persons, 
When  the  rest  part  away  for  superb  persons,  and  contribute  to 

them, 
When  fathers,  firm,  unconstrained,  open-eyed — when  breeds  of 

the  most  perfect  mothers  denote  America, 
Then  to  me  ripeness  and  conclusion." 

XV 

After  all  I  think  it  matters  little  whether  we 
call  him  poet  or  not.  Grant  that  he  is  not  a  poet 
in  the  usual  or  technical  sense,  but  poet-prophet, 
or  poet-seer,  or  all  combined.  He  is  a  poet  plus 
something  else.  It  is  when  he  is  judged  less  than 
poet,  or  no  poet  at  all,  that  we  feel  injustice  is  done 
him.  Grant  that  his  work  is  not  art,  that  it  does 
not  give  off  the  perfume,  the  atmosphere  of  the 
highly  wrought  artistic  works  like  those  of  Tenny 
son,  but  of  something  quite  different. 


200  WHITMAN 

We  have  all  been  slow  to  see  that  his  cherished 
ends  were  religious  rather  than  literary ;  that,  over 
and  above  all  else,  he  was  a  great  religious  teacher 
and  prophet.  Had  he  been  strictly  a  literary  poet, 
like  Lowell,  or  Longfellow,  or  Tennyson,  —  that  is, 
a  writer  working  for  purely  artistic  effects,  —  we 
should  be  compelled  to  judge  him  quite  differently. 

"Leaves  of  Grass"  is  a  gospel  —  glad  tidings  of 
great  joy  to  those  who  are  prepared  to  receive  it. 
Its  final  value  lies  in  its  direct,  intense,  personal 
appeal;  in  what  it  did  for  Symonds,  who  said  it 
made  a  man  of  him;  in  what  it  did  for  Stevenson, 
who  said  it  dispelled  a  thousand  illusions;  in  what 
it  did  for  Mrs.  Gilchrist,  who  said  it  enabled  her 
to  find  her  own  soul;  in 'what  it  does  for  all  earnest 
readers  of  it  in  blending  with  the  inmost  current 
of  their  lives.  Whitman  is  the  life-gixe.L__of_our 
time.  How  shall  a  poet  give  us  life  but  by  making 
us  share  his  larger  measure  of  life,  his  larger  hope, 
his  larger  love,  his  larger  charity,  his  saner  and 
wider  outlook?  What  are  the  three  great  life- 
giving  principles  ?  Can  we  name  them  better  than 
St.  Paul  named  them  eighteen  hundred  years  ago, 
—  faith,  hope,  charity  ?  And  these  are  the  corner 
stones  of  Whitman's  work,  —  a  faith  so  broad  and 
fervent  that  it  accepts  death  as  joyously  as  life, 
and  sees  all  things  at  last  issue  in  spiritual  results; 
a  hope  that  sees  the  golden  age  ahead  of  us,  not 
behind  us;  and  a  charity  that  balks  at  nothing,  that 
makes  him  identify  himself  with  offenders  and  out 
laws;  a  charity  as  great  as  his  who  said  to  the  thief 


HIS  RELATION   TO  LIFE   AND   MORALS        201 

on  the  cross,  "This  day  thou  shalt  be  with  me  in 
paradise. " 

To  cry  up  faith,  hope,  and  charity  is  not  to  make 
men  partakers  of  them;  but  to  exemplify  them  in  a 
survey  of  the  whole  problem  of  life,  to  make  them 
vital  as  hearing  or  eyesight  in  a  work  of  the  imagi 
nation,  to  show  them  as  motives  and  impulses  con 
trolling  all  the  rest,  is  to  beget  and  foster  them  in 
the  mind  of  the  beholder. 

He  is  more  and  he  is  less  than  the  best  of  the 
other  poets.  The  popular,  the  conventional  poets 
are  mainly  occupied  with  the  artistic  side  of  things, 
—  with  that  which  refines,  solaces,  beautifies.  Whit 
man  is  mainly  occupied  with  the  cosmic  and  uni 
versal  side  of  things,  and  the  human  and  spiritual 
values  that  may  be  extracted  from  them.  His 
poetry  is  not  the  result  of  the  same  kind  of  selec 
tion  and  partiality  as  that  we  are  more  familiar 
with. 

Hence,  while  the  message  of  Tennyson  and  his 
kind  is  the  message  of  beauty,  the  message  of  Whit 
man  is,  in  a  much  fuller  sense,  the  message  of  life. 
He  speaks  the  word  of  faith  and  power.  This  is 
his  distinction;  he  is  the  life-giver.  Such  a  man 
comes  that  we  may  have  life,  and  have  it  more  abun 
dantly. 

The  message  of  beauty,  —  who  would  undervalue 
it?  The  least  poet  and  poetling  lisps  some  word 
or  syllable  of  it.  The  masters  build  its  temples 
and  holy  places.  All  own  it,  all  receive  it  gladly. 
But  the  gospel  of  life,  there  is  danger  that  we  shall 


202  WHITMAN 

not  know  it  when  we  hear  it.  It  is  a  harsher  and 
more  heroic  strain  than  the  other.  It  calls  no  man 
to  his  ease,  or  to  he  lulled  and  soothed.  It  is  a 
summons  and  a  challenge.  It  lays  rude,  strong 
hands  upon  you.  It  filters  and  fihres  your  blood. 
It  is  more  of  the  frost,  the  rains,  the  winds,  than  of 
cushions  or  parlors. 

The  call  of  life  is  a  call  to  battle  always.  We 
are  stronger  by  the  strength  of  every  obstacle  or 
enemy  overcome. 

"Listen  !    I  will  be  honest  with  you, 

I  do  not  offer  the  old  smooth  prizes,  but  offer  rough  new  prizes, 

These  are  the  days  that  must  happen  to  you : 

"You  shall  not  heap  up  what  is  called  riches, 

You  shall  scatter  with  lavish  hand  all  that  you  earn  or  achieve ; 

You  but  arrive  at  the  city  to  which  you  were  destined  —  you 

hardly  settle  yourself  to  satisfaction,  before  you  are  call«d 

by  an  irresistible  call  to  depart. 
You  shall  be  treated  to  the  ironical  smiles  and  mockings  of  those 

who  remain  behind  you  ; 
What  beckoningsof  love  you  receive,  you  shall  only  answer  with 

passionate  kisses  of  parting, 
You  shall  not  allow  the  hold  of  those  who  spread  their  reached 

hands  toward  you. 

"Allons  !    After  the   GREAT  COMPANIONS  !  and  to  belong  to 
them  ! " 

XVI 

Whitman  always  avails  himself  of  the  poet's 
privilege  and  magnifies  himself.  He  magnifies 
others  in  the  same  ratio,  he  magnifies  all  things. 
"Magnifying  and  applying  come  I,"  he  says,  "out 
bidding  at  the  start  the  old  cautious  hucksters." 
Indeed,  the  character  which  speaks  throughout 
"  Leaves  of  Grass "  is  raised  to  the  highest  degree 


HIS   RELATION   TO  LIFE   AND  MORALS        203 

of  personal  exaltation.  To  it  nothing  is  trivial, 
nothing  is  mean;  all  is  good,  all  is  divine.  The 
usual  distinctions  disappear,  burned  up,  the  poet 
says,  for  religion's  sake.  All  the  human  attributes 
are  heightened  and  enlarged;  sympathy  as  wide  as 
the  world;  love  that  balks  at  nothing;  charity  as 
embracing  as  the  sky;  egotism  like  the  force  of 
gravity;  religious  fervor  that  consumes  the  coarsest 
facts  like  stubble ;  spirituality  that  finds  God  every 
where  every  hour  of  the  day;  faith  that  welcomes 
death  as  cheerfully  as  life;  comradeship  that  would 
weld  the  nation  into  a^  family  of  brothers;  sexu 
ality  that  makes  prudes  shudder;  poetic  enthu 
siasm  that  scornfully  dispenses  with  all  the  usual 
adventitious  aids;  and  in  general  a  largeness,  coarse 
ness,  and  vehemence  that  are  quite  appalling  to  the 
general  reader.  Lovers  of  poetry  will  of  necessity 
be  very  slow  in  adjusting  their  notions  to  the  stand 
ards  of  "Leaves  of  Grass."  It  is  a  survey  of  life 
and  of  the  world  from  the  cosmic  rather  than  from 
the  conventional  standpoint.  It  carries  the  stand 
ards  of  the  natural-universal  into  all  fields. 

Some  men  have  accepted  poverty  and  privation 
with  such  contentment  and  composure  as  to  make 
us  almost  envious  of  their  lot ;  and  Whitman  accepts 
the  coarser,  commoner  human  elements  which  he 
finds  in  himself,  and  which  most  of  us  try  to  conceal 
or  belittle,  with  such  frankness  and  perception  of 
their  real  worth  that  they  acquire  new  meaning 
and  value  in  our  eyes.  If  he  paraded  these  things 
unduly,  and  showed  an  overweening  preference  for 


204  WHITMAN 

them,  as  some  of  his  critics  charge,  this  is  of  course 
an  element  of  weakness. 

His  precept  and  his  illustration,  carried  out  in 
life,  would  fill  the  land  with  strong,  native,  original 
types  of  men  and  women  animated  by  the  most 
vehement  comradeship,  selfism  and  otherism  going 
hand  in  hand. 


HIS   EELATION   TO   CULTUKE 


"  LEAVES  OF  GRASS  "  is  not  the  poetry  of  cul 
ture,  but  it  is  to  be  said  in  the  same  breath  that  it 
is  not  such  a  work  as  an  uncultured  man  produces, 
or  is  capable  of  producing. 

The  uncultured  man  does  not  think  Whitman's 
thoughts,  or  propose  Whitman's  problems  to  him 
self,  or  understand  or  appreciate  them  at  all.  The 
"  Leaves  "  are  perhaps  of  supreme  interest  only  to 
men  of  deepest  culture,  because  they  contain  in 
such  ample  measure  that  without  which  all  culture 
is  mere  varnish  or  veneer.  They  are  indirectly  a 
tremendous  criticism  of  American  life  and  civiliza 
tion,  and  they  imply  that  breadth  of  view  and  that 
liberation  of  spirit  —  that  complete  disillusioning  — 
whiqh.  is  the  best  result  of  culture,  and  which  all 
great  souls  have  reached,  no  matter  who  or  what 
their  schoolmasters  may  have  been. 

Our  reading  public  probably  does  not  and  cannot 
see  itself  in  Whitman  at  all.  He  must  be  a  great 
shock  to  its  sense  of  the  genteel  and  the  respectable. 
Nor  can  the  working  people  and  the  unlettered, 
though  they  were  drawn  to  Whitman  the  man,  be 
expected  to  respond  to  any  considerable  extent  to 
Whitman  the  poet  His  standpoint  can  be  reached 


206  WHITMAN 

only  after  passing  through  many  things  and  freeing 
one's  self  from  many  illusions.  He  is  more  repre 
sentative  of  the  time-spirit  out  of  which  America 
grew,  and  which  is  now  shaping  the  destiny  of  the 
race  upon  this  continent.  He  strikes  under  and 
through  our  whole  civilization. 

He  despised  our  social  gods,  he  distrusted  our 
book-culture,  he  was  alarmed  at  the  tendency  to 
the  depletion  and  attenuation  of  the  national  type, 
and  he  aimed  to  sow  broadcast  the  germs  of  more 
manly  ideals.  His  purpose  was  to  launch  his  criti 
cism  from  the  basic  facts  of  human  life,  psychic 
and  physiologic;  to  inject  into  the  veins  of  our 
anaemic  literature  the  reddest,  healthiest  kind  of 
blood;  and  in  doing  so  he  has  given  free  swing  to 
the  primary  human  traits  and  affections  and  to  sex 
uality,  and  has  charged  his  pages  with  the  spirit  of 
real  things,  real  life. 

We  have  been  so  long  used  to  verse  which  is 
the  outcome  of  the  literary  impulse  alone,  which 
is  written  at  so  many  removes  from  the  primary 
human  qualities,  produced  from  the  extreme  verge 
of  culture  and  artificial  refinement!  which  is  so 
innocent  of  the  raciness  and  healthful  coarseness  of 
nature,  that  poetry  which  has  these  qualities,  which 
implies  the  body  as  well  as  the  mind,  which  is  the 
direct  outgrowth  of  a  radical  human  personality, 
and  which  make  demands  like  those  made  by  real 
things,  is  either  an  offense  to  us  or  is  mffiunder- 
stood.j 


HIS  RELATION  TO  CULTURE       207 


II 

Whitman  says  his  book  is  not  a  good  lesson,  but 
it  takes  down  the  bars  to  a  good  lesson,  and  that  to 
another,  and  that  to  another  still.  To  take  down 
bars  rather  than  to  put  them  up  is  always  Whit 
man's  aim;  to  make  his  reader  free  of  the  uni- 
verse,/to  turn  him  forth  into  the  fresh  and  inex 
haustible  pastures  of  time,  space,  eternity,  and  with 
a  smart  slap  upon  his  back  with  the  halter  as  a 
spur  and  send-off,  is  about  what  he  would  doy  His 
message,  first  and  last,  is  "give  play  to  yourself;" 
"  let  yourself  go ; "  —  happiness  is  in  the  quest 
of  happiness;  power  comes  to  him  who  power 
uses. 

"Long  enough  have  you  timidly  waded,  holding  a  plank  by  the 

shore ; 

Now  I  will  you  to  be  a  bold  swimmer, 
To  jump  off  in  the  midst  of  the  sea,  rise  again,  nod  to  me,  shout, 

and  laughingly  dash  with  your  hair." 

To  hold  Whitman  up  to  ridicule,  and  to  convict 
him  of  grossness  and  tediousness,  is  easy  enough; 
first,  because  he  is  so  out  of  relation  to  the  modes 
and  taste  of  his  times,  and,  secondly,  because  he  has 
somewhat  of  the  uncouthness  and  coarseness  of  large 
bodies.  Then  his  seriousness  and  simplicity,  like 
that  of  Biblical  and  Oriental  writers,  —  a  kind  of 
childish  inaptness  and  homeliness, —  often  exposes 
him  to  our  keen,  almost  abnormal  sense  of  the  ridic 
ulous.  rHe  was  deficient  in  humor,  and  he  wrote  his 
book  in  entire  obliviousness  of  social  usages  and 
conventions,  so  that  the  perspective  of  it  is  not  the 


208  WHITMAN 

social  or  indoor  perspective,  but  that  of  life  and 
nature  at  large,  careering  and  unhampered.)  It  is 
probably  the  one  modern  poem  whose  standards  are 
not  social  and  what  are  called  artistic. 

Its  atmosphere  is  always  that  of  the  large,  free 
spaces  of  vast,  unhoused  nature.  It  has  been  said 
that  the  modern  world  could  be  reconstructed  from 
"Leaves  of  Grass,"  so  compendious  and  all-inclu 
sive  is  it  in  its  details;  but  of  the  modern  world  as 
a  social  organization,  of  man  as  the  creature  of  social 
usages  and  prohibitions,  of  fashions,  of  dress,  of 
ceremony,  —  the  indoor,  parlor  and  drawing-room 
man,  —  there  is  no  hint  in  its  pages.  In  its  matter 
and  in  its  spirit,  in  its  standards  and  in  its  exe 
cution,  in  its  ideals  and  in  its  processes,  (it  belongs 
to  and  affiliates  with  open-air  nature,  often  reach 
ing,  I  think,  the  cosmic  and  unconditioned./  In  a 
new  sense  is  Whitman  the  brother  of  the  orbs  and 
cosmic  processes,  "conveying  a  sentiment  and  invi 
tation  of  the  earth."  All  his  enthusiasms,  all  his 
sympathies  have  to  do  with  the  major  and  funda 
mental  elements  of  life.  He  is  a  world-poet.  We 
do  not  readily  adjust  our  indoor  notions  to  him. 
Our  culture-standards  do  not  fit  him. 

in 

The  problem  of  the  poet  is  doubtless  more  diffi 
cult  in  our  day  than  in  any  past  day;  it  is  harder 
for  him  to  touch  reality. 

The  accumulations  of  our  civilization  are  enor 
mous  :  an  artificial  world  of  great  depth  and  potency 


HIS   RELATION  TO  CULTURE  209 

overlies  the  world  of  reality;  especially  does  it 
overlie  the  world  of  man's  moral  and  intellectual 
nature.  Most  of  us  live  and  thrive  in  this  artificial 
world,  and  never  know  but  it  is  the  world  of  God's 
own  creating.  Only  now  and  then  a  man  strikes 
his  roots  down  through  this  made  land  into  fresh, 
virgin  soil.  When  the  religious  genius  strikes  his 
roots  through  it,  and  insists  upon  a  present  revela 
tion,  we  are  apt  to  cry  "heretic;"  when  the  poet 
strikes  his  roots  through  it,  as  Whitman  did,  and 
insists  upon  giving  us  reality,  —  giving  us  himself 
before  custom  or  law, — we  cry  "barbarian,"  or 
"art-heretic,"  or  "outlaw  of  art." 

In  the  countless  adjustments  and  accumulations, 
and  in  the  oceanic  currents  of  our  day  and  land,  the 
individual  is  more  and  more  lost  sight  of,  —  merged, 
swamped,  effaced.  See  him  in  Whitman  rising 
above  it  all.  See  it  all  shot  through  and  through 
with  his  quality  and  obedient  to  his  will.  See  the 
all-leveling  tendency  of  democracy,  the  effacing  and 
sterilizing  power  of  a  mechanical  and  industrial 
age,  set  at  naught  or  reversed  by  a  single  towering 
personality.  See  America,  its  people,  their  doings, 
their  types,  their  good  and  evil  traits,  all  bodied 
forth  in  one  composite  character,  and  this  character 
justifying  itself  and  fronting  the  universe  with  the 
old  joy  and  contentment. 


210  WHITMAN 

IV 

"  The  friendly  and  flowing  savage,  who  is  he  ? 

Is  he  waiting  for  civilization,  or  is  he  past  it  and  master  of  it?  " 

Do  we  not,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  ask 
this  or  a  similar  question  of  every  poet  or  artist 
whom  we  pass  in  review  before  us?  Is  he  master 
of  his  culture,  or  does  it  master  him?  Does  he 
strike  back  through  it  to  simple,  original  nature,  or 
is  he  a  potted  plant?  Does  he  retain  the  native 
savage  virtues,  or  is  he  entirely  built  up  from  the 
outside?  We  constantly  mistake  culture  for  mere 
refinement,  which  it  is  not:  it  is  a  liberating  pro 
cess;  it  is  a  clearing  away  of  obstructions,  and  the 
giving  to  inherent  virtues  a  chance  to  express 
themselves.  It  makes  savage  nature  friendly  and 
considerate.  I  The  aim  of  culture  is  not  to  get  rid 
of  nature,  but  to  utilize  nature^  The  great  poet  is 
always  a  "friendly  and  flowing  savage,"  the  master 
and  never  the  slave  of  the  complex  elements  of  our 
artificial  lives. 

^  Though  our  progress  and  civilization  are  a  triumph 
over  nature,  yet  in  an  important  sense  we  never  get 
away  from  nature  or  improve  upon  her.  Her  stand 
ards  are  still  our  standards,  her  sweetness  and 
excellence  are  still  our  aim.  Her  health,  her  fer 
tility,  her  wholeness,  her  freshness,  her  innocence, 
her  evolution,  we  would  fain  copy  or  reproduce. 
We  would,  if  we  could,  keep  the  pungency  and 
aroma  of  her  wild  fruit  in  our  cultivated  speci 
mens,  the  virtue  and  hardiness  of  the  savage  in  our 
fine  gentlemen,  the  joy  and  spontaneity  of  her  bird- 


HIS  RELATION  TO  CULTURE       211 

songs  in  our  poetry,  the  grace  and  beauty  of  her 
forms  in  our  sculpture  and  carvings. ) 

A  poetic  utterance  from  an  original  individual 
standpoint,  something  definite  and  characteristic,  — 
this  is  always  the  crying  need.  What  a  fine  talent 
has  this  or  that  young  British  or  American  poet 
whom  we  might  name !  But  we  see  that  the  singer 
has  not  yet  made  this  talent  his  own;  it  is  a  kind 
of  borrowed  capital;  it  is  the  general  taste  and  in 
telligence  that  speak.  When  will  he  redeem  all 
these  promises,  and  become  a  fixed  centre  of  thought 
and  emotion  in  himself  ?  To  write  poems  is  no  dis 
tinction  ;  to  be  a  poem,  to  be  a  fixed  point  amid  the 
seething  chaos,  a  rock  amid  the  currents,  giving 
your  own  form  and  character  to  them,  —  that  is 
something. 

It  matters  little,  as  Whitman  himself  says,  who 
contributes  the  mass  of  poetic  verbiage  upon  which 
any  given  age  feeds. 

But  for  a  national  first-class  poem,  or  a  great 
work  of  the  imagination  of  any  sort,  the  man  is 
everything,  because  such  works  finally  rest  upon 
primary  human  qualities  and  special  individual 
traits.  A  richly  endowed  personality  is  always  the 
main  dependence  in  such  cases,  or,  as  Goethe  says, 
"in  the  great  work  the  great  person  is  always  pres 
ent  as  the  great  factor." 

"  Leaves  of  Grass  "  is  as  distinctly  an  emanation 
from  Walt  Whitman,  from  his  quality  and  equip 
ment  as  a  man  apart  from  anything  he  owed  to 
books  or  to  secondary  influences,  as  a  tree  is  an 


212  WHITMAN 

emanation  from  the  soil.  It  is,  moreover,  an  ema 
nation  from  him  as  an  American  in  the  latter  half 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  as  a  typical  demo 
cratic  composite  man,  a  man  of  the  common  people, 
bone  of  their  bone  and  flesh  of  their  flesh,  but  with 
an  extraordinary  endowment  of  spiritual  and  intel 
lectual  power,  to  which  he  has  given  full  swing 
without  abating  one  jot  or  tittle  the  influence  of 
his  heritage  of  the  common  stock. 


There  is  one  important  quality  that  enters  into 
all  first-class  literary  production  and  into  all  art, 
which  is  taken  little  account  of  in  current  criticism : 
I  mean  the  quality  of  the  manly,  —  the  pulse  and 
pressure  of  manly  virility  and  strength.  Goethe 
spoke  of  it  to  Eckermann  as  a  certain  urgent  power 
in  which  the  art  of  his  time  was  lacking.  The 
producers  had  taste  and  skill,  but  were  not  master 
ful  as  men.  Goethe  always  looked  straight  through 
the  work  to  the  man  behind  it;  in  art  and  poetry 
the  personality  was  everything.  The  special  talent 
of  one  kind  or  another  was  quite  secondary.  The 
greatest  works  are  the  least  literary.  To  speak  in 
literature  as  a  man,  and  not  merely  as  a  scholar  or 
professional  litterateur,  is  always  the  crying  need. 
The  new  poet  has  this  or  that  gift,  but  what  is 
the  human  fund  back  of  all?  What  is  his  endow 
ment  of  the  common  universal  human  traits  1  How 
much  of  a  man  is  he  ?  His  measure  in  this  respect 
will  be  the  measure  of  the  final  value  of  his  con 
tribution. 


HIS  RELATION  TO  CULTURE       213 

The  Decadence  of  literature  sets  in  when  there  is 
more  talent  than  character  in  current  production;  ) 
when  rare  literary  and  artistic  gifts  no  longer  come 
wedded  to  large  human  and  manly  gifts;  when 
taste  is  fastidious  rather  than  robust  and  hearty. 
When  was  there  a  man  born  to  English  or  Ameri- 
can  literature  with  a  large  endowment  of  the  uni 
versal  human  qualities,  or  with  those  elements  that 
give  breadth  and  power,  and  which  lead  art  rather 
than  follow  it  ?  We  are  living  in  an  age  of  great 
purity  and  refinement  of  taste  in  art  and  letters, 
but  destitute  of  power.  Goethe  spoke  of  Walter 
Scott  not  merely  as  a  great  talent,  but  as  a  "com 
prehensive  nature."  Without  this  comprehensive 
nature  as  a  setting,  his  great  talent  would  have 
amounted  to  but  little.  This  gives  the  weight, 
the  final  authority.  How  little  there  was  on  the 
surface  of  Scott  of  the  literary  keenness,  subtlety, 
knowingness  of  later  producers,  and  yet  how  far  his 
contribution  surpasses  theirs  in  real  human  pathos 
and  suggestiveness ! 

The  same  might  be  said  of  Count  Tolstoi,  who 
is  also,  back  of  all,  a  great  loving  nature. 

One  has  great  joy  in  Whitman  because  he  is  be 
yond  and  over  all  a  large  and  loving  personality; 
his  work  is  but  a  thin  veil  through  which  a  great 
nature  clearly  shows.  The  urgent  power  of  which 
Goethe  speaks  is  almost  too  strong,  —  too  strong 
for  current  taste:  we  want  more  art  and  less  man, 
more  literature  and  less  life.  It  is  not  merely  a 
great  mind  that  we  feel,  but  a  great  character.  It 


214  WHITMAN 

penetrates  every  line,  and  indeed  makes  it  true  of 
the  book  that  whoeverj "  touches  this  touches  a 
man.^f 

The  lesson  of  the  poet  is  all  in  the  direction  of 
the  practical  manly  and  womanly  qualities  and  vir 
tues,  —  health,  temperance,  sanity,  power,  endur 
ance,  aplomb,  —  and  not  at  all  in  the  direction  of 
the  literary  and  artistic  qualities  or  culture. 

"  To  stand  the  cold  or  heat,  to  take  good  aim  with  a  gun,  to  sail 
a  boat,  to  manage  horses,  to  beget  superb  children, 

To  speak  readily  and  clearly,  to  feel  at  home  among  common 
people, 

To  hold  our  own  in  terrible  positions  on  land  and  sea." 

All  his  aims,  ideas,  impulses,  aspirations,  relate 
to  life,  to  personality,  and  to  power  to  deal  with 
real  things ;  and  if  we  expect  from  him  only  liter 
ary  ideas  —  form,  beauty,  lucidity,  proportion  —  we 
shall  be  disappointed.  He  seeks  to  make  the  im 
pression  of  concrete  forces  and  objects,  and  not  of 
art. 

"Not  for  an  embroiderer, 

(There  will  always  be  plenty  of  embroiderers  —  I  welcome  them 

also), 
But  for  the  fibre  of  things,  and  for  inherent  men  and  women. 

"Not  to  chisel  ornaments, 

But  to  chisel  with  free  stroke  the  heads  and  limbs  of  plenteous 
Supreme  Gods,  that  The  States  may  realize  them,  walk 
ing  and  talking." 

His  whole  work  is  a  radiation  from  an  exemplifi 
cation  of  the  idea  that  there  is  something  better 
than  to  be  an  artist  or  a  poet,  —  namely,  to  be  a 
man.  The  poet's  rapture  springs  not  merely  from 


HIS  KELATION  TO  CULTURE       215 

the  contemplation  of  the  beautiful  and  the  artistic, 
but  from  the  contemplation  of  the  whole ;  from  the 
contemplation  of  democracy,  the  common  people, 
workingmen,  soldiers,  sailors,  his  own  body,  death, 
sex,  manly  love,  occupations,  and  the  force  and 
vitality  of  things.  We  are  to  look  for  the  clews  to 
him  in  the  open  air  and  in  natural  products,  rather 
than  in  the  traditional  art  forms  and  methods.  He 
declares  he  will  never  again  mention  love  or  death 
inside  of  a  house,  and  that  he  will  translate  himself 
only  to  those  who  privately  stay  with  him  in  the 
open  air. 

"  If  you  would  understand  me,  go  to  the  heights  or  water-shore ; 
The  nearest  gnat  is  an    explanation,  and  a  drop  or  motion  of 
waves  a  key: 

The  maul,  the  oar,  the  handsaw,  second  my  words. 

•  '  <    - 

"  No  shuttered  room  or  school  can  commune  with  me, 
But  roughs  and  little  children  better  than  they. 

"The  young  mechanic  is  closest  to  me  —  he  knows  me  pretty 
well. 

The  woodman,  that  takes  his  axe  and  jug  with  him,  shall  take 
me  with  him  all  day; 

The  farm-boy,  ploughing  in  the  field,  feels  good  at  the  sound  of 
my  voice: 

In  vessels  that  sail,  my  words  sail  —  I  go  with  fishermen  and  sea 
men,  and  love  them. 

"My  face  rubs  to  the  hunter's  face  when  he  lies  down  alone  in 

his  blanket; 

The  driver,  thinking  of  me,  does  not  mind  the  jolt  of  his  wagon; 
The  young  mother  and  old  mother  comprehend  me ; 
The  girl  and  the  wife  rest  the  needle  a  moment,  and  forget  where 

they  are: 
They  and  all  would  resume  what  I  have  told  them." 


216  WHITMAN 


VI 

So  far  as  literature  is  a  luxury,  and  for  the  cul 
tured,  privileged  few,  its  interests  are  not  in  Whit 
man  ;  so  far  as  poetry  represents  the  weakness  of  man 
rather  than  his  strength;  so  far  as  it  expresses  a 
shrinking  from  reality  and  a  refuge  in  sentimental- 
ism;  so  far  as  it  is  aristocratic  as  in  Tennyson,  or 
mocking  and  rebellious  as  in  Byron,  or  erotic  and 
mephitic  as  in  Swinburne,  or  regretful  and  remi 
niscent  as  in  Arnold,  or  a  melodious  baying  of  the 
moon  as  in  Shelley,  or  the  outcome  of  mere  scholarly 
and  technical  acquirements  as  in  so  many  of  our 
younger  poets,  —  so  far  as  literature  or  poetry,  I 
say,  stand  for  these  things,  there  is  little  of  either 
in  Whitman.  (Whitman  stands  for  the  primary 
and  essential;  he  stands  for  that  which  makes  the 
body  as  well  as  the  mind,  which  makes  life  sane 
and  joyous  and  masterful.}  Everything  that  tends 
to  depletion,  satiety,  the  abnormal,  the  erotic  and 
exotic,  that  induces  the  stress  and  fever  of  life,  is 
foreign  to  his  spirit.  He  is  less  beautiful  than  the 
popular  poets,  yet  more  beautiful.  He  will  have 
to  do  only  with  the  inevitable  beauty,  the  beauty 
that  comes  unsought,  that  resides  in  the  interior 
meanings  and  affiliations,  —  the  beauty  that  dare 
turn  its  back  upon  the  beautiful. 

Whitman  has  escaped  entirely  the  literary  dis 
ease,  the  characteristic  symptoms  of  which,  accord 
ing  to  Renan,  is  that  people  love  less  things  them 
selves  than  the  literary  effects  which  they  produce. 


HIS  RELATION  TO  CULTURE       217 

He  has  escaped  the  art  disease  which  makes  art  all 
in  all;  the  religious  disease,  which  runs  to  maudlin 
piety  and  seeks  to  win  heaven  by  denying  earth; 
the  beauty  disease,  which  would  make  of  poesy 
a  conventional  flower-garden.  He  brings  heroic 
remedies  for  our  morbid  sex-consciousness,  and  for 
all  the  pathological  conditions  brought  about  by 
our  excess  of  refinement,  and  the  dyspeptic  deple 
tions  of  our  indoor  artificial  lives.  Whitman  with 
stood  the  aesthetic  temptation,  as  Amiel  calls  it,  to 
which  most  of  our  poets  fall  a  victim,  —  the  lust  for 
the  merely  beautiful,  the  epicureanism  of  the  liter 
ary  faculties.  We  can  make  little  of  him  if  we  are 
in  quest  of  aesthetic  pleasures  alone.  "In  order  to 
establish  those  literary  authorities  which  are  called 
classic  centuries,"  says  Kenan,  "something  healthy 
and  solid  is  necessary.  Common  household  bread 
is  of  more  value  here  than  pastry."  But  the  vast 
majority  of  literary  producers  aim  at  pastry,  or, 
worse  yet,  confectionery,  —  something  especially 
delightful  and  titivating  to  the  taste.  No  doubt 
Renan  himself  was  something  of  a  literary  epicure, 
but  then  he  imposed  upon  himself  large  and  serious 
tasks,  and  his  work  as  a  whole  is  solid  and  nour 
ishing;  his  charm  of  style  does  not  blind  and  se 
duce  us.  It  makes  all  the  difference  in  the  world 
whether  we  seek  the  beautiful  through  the  true,  or 
the  true  through  the  beautiful.  Seek  ye  the  king 
dom  of  truth  first  and  all  things  shall  be  added. 
The  novice  aims  to  write  beautifully,  but  the  master 
aims  to  see  truly  and  to  feel  vitally.  Beauty  fol 
lows  him,  and  is  never  followed  by  him. 


218  WHITMAN 

Nature  is  beautiful  because  she  is  something  else 
first,  yes,  and  last,  too,  and  all  the  while.  Whit 
man's  work  is  baptized  in  the  spirit  of  the  whole, 
and  its  health  and  sweetness  in  this  respect,  when 
compared  with  the  over-refined  artistic  works,  is 
like  that  of  a  laborer  in  the  fields  compared  with 
the  pale  dyspeptic  ennuyd. 

VII 

Whitman's  ideal  is  undoubtedly  much  /larger, 
coarser,  stronger  —  much  more  racy  and  democratic 
—  than  the  ideal  we  are  familiar  with  in  current 
literature,)  and  upon  which  our  culture  is  largely 
based.  He  applies  the  democratic  spirit  not  only 
to  the  material  of  poetry,  —  excluding  all  the  old 
stock  themes  of  love  and  war,  lords  and  ladies, 
myths  and  fairies  and  legends,  etc. ,  —  but  he  ap 
plies  it  to  the  form  as  well,  excluding  rhyme  and 
measure  and  all  the  conventional  verse  architecture. 
His  work  stands  or  it  falls  upon  its  inherent,  its 
intrinsic  qualities,  the  measure  of  life  or  power 
which  it  holds.  This  ideal  was  neither  the  scholar 
nor  the  priest,  nor  any  type  of  the  genteel  or  ex 
ceptionally  favored  or  cultivated.  His  influence 
does  not  make  for  any  form  of  depleted,  indoor, 
over-refined  or  extra-cultured  humanity.  The  spirit 
of  his  work  transferred  to  practice  begets  a  life  full 
and  strong  on  all  sides,  affectionate,  magnetic,  tol 
erant,  spiritual,  bold  with  the  flavor  and  quality  of 
simple,  healthful,  open-air  humanity.  (He  opposes 
culture  and  refinement  only  as  he  opposes  that  which 


HIS  RELATION  TO  CULTURE       219 

weakens,  drains,  emasculates,  and  tends  to  beget  a 
scoffing,  carping,  hypercritical  class.  3  The  culture 
of  life,  of  nature,  and  that  which  flows  from  the 
exercise  of  the  manly  instincts  and  affections,  is  the 
culture  implied  by  "Leaves  of  Grass."  The  demo 
cratic  spirit  is  undoubtedly  more  or  less  jealous 
of  the  refinements  of  our  artificial  culture  and  of 
the  daintiness  and  aloofness  of  our  literature.  The 
people  look  askance  at  men  who  are  above  them 
without  being  of  them,  who  have  dropped  the  traits 
and  attractions  which  they  share  with  unlettered 
humanity.  Franklin  and  Lincoln  are  closer  akin  to 
this  spirit,  and  hence  more  in  favor  with  it,  than  a 
Jefferson  or  a  Sumner. 

Whitman  might  be  called  the  poet  of  the  abso 
lute,  the  unconditioned.  His  work  is  launched  at  a 
farther  remove  from  our  arts,  conventions,  usages, 
civilization,  and  all  the  artificial  elements  that  mod 
ify  and  enter  into  our  lives,  than  that  of  any  other 
man.  Absolute  candor,  absolute  pride,  absolute 
charity,  absolute  social  and  sexual  equality,  absolute 
nature.  It  is  not  conditioned  by  what  we  deem 
modest  or  immodest,  high  or  low,  male  or  female.  It 
is  not  conditioned  by  our  notions  of  good  and  evil, 
by  our  notions  of  the  refined  and  the  select,  by  what 
we  call  good  taste  and  bad  taste. "  It  is  the  voice  of 
absolute  man,  sweeping  away  the  artificialjjthrowing 
himself  boldly^  joyously,  upon  unconditioned._na- 
ture.  We  are  all  engaged  in  upholding  the  correct 
and  the  conventional,  and  drawing  the  line  sharply 
between  good  and  evil',  the  high  and  the  low,  and 


220  WHITMAN 

it  is  well  that  we  should;  but  here  is  a  man  who 
aims  to  take  absolute  ground,  and  to  look  at  the 
world  as  God  himself  might  look  at  it,  without  par 
tiality  or  discriminating,  —  it  is  all  good,  and  there 
is  no  failure  or  imperfection  in  the  universe  and  can 
be  none : — 

"  Open  mouth  of  my  Soul  uttering  gladness, 
Eyes  of  my  Soul  seeing  perfection, 
Natural  life  of  me,  faithfully  praising  things, 
Corroborating  forever  the  triumph  of  things." 

He  does  not  take  sides  against  evil,  in  the  usual 
way,  he  does  not  take  sides  with  the  good  except  as 
nature  herself  does.  He  celebrates  the  All. 

Can  we  accept  the  world  as  science  reveals  it  to 
us,  as  all  significant,  as  all  in  ceaseless  transmuta 
tion,  as  every  atom  aspiring  to  be  man,  an  endless 
unfolding  of  primal  germs,  without  beginning,  with 
out  end,  without  failure  or  imperfection,  the  golden 
age  ahead  of  us,  not  behind  us  ? 

VIII 

Because  of  Whitman's  glorification  of  pride,  ego 
ism,  brawn,  self  -  reliance,  it  is  charged  that  the 
noble,  the  cultured,  the  self-denying,  have  no  place 
in  his  system.  What  place  have  they  in  the 
antique  bards  ?  —  in  Homer,  in  Job,  in  Isaiah, 
in  Dante?  They  have  the  same  place  in  Whit 
man,  yet  it  is  to  be  kept  in  mind  that  Whitman 
does  not  stand  for  the  specially  social  virtues,  nor 
for  culture,  nor  for  the  refinements  which  it  in 
duces,  nor  for  art,  nor  for  any  conventionality. 


HIS  RELATION  TO   CULTURE  221 

There  are  flowers  of  human  life  which  we  are  not 
to  look  for  in  Walt  Whitman.  The  note  of  fine 
manners,  chivalrous  conduct,  which  we  get  in  Em 
erson;  the  sweetness  and  light  gospel  of  Arnold; 
the  gospel  of  hero-worship  of  Carlyle;  the  gracious 
scholarship  of  our  New  England  poets,  etc.,  —  we 
do  not  get  in  Walt  Whitman.  There  is  nothing  in 
him  at  war  with  these  things,  but  he  is  concerned 
with  more  primal  and  elemental  questions.  He 
strikes  under  and  beyond  all  these  things. 

What  are  the  questions  or  purposes,  then,  in 
which  his  work  has  root  ?  Simply  put,  to  lead  the 
way  to  larger,  saner,  %  more  normal,  more  robust 
types  of  men  and  women  on  this  continent;  to  pre 
figure  and  help  develop  the  new  democratic  man,  — 
to  project  him  into  literature  on  a  scale  and  with 
a  distinctness  that  cannot  be  mistaken.  /To  this 
end  he  keeps  a  deep  hold  of  the  savage,  the  unre 
fined,  and  marshals  the  elements  and  influences  that 
make  for  the  virile,  the  heroic,  the  sane,  the  large, 
and  for  the  perpetuity  of  the  race%  We  cannot 
refine  the  elements,  —  the  air,  the  water,  the  soil, 
the  sunshine,  —  and  the  more  we  pervert  or  shut 
out  these  from  our  lives  the  worse  for  us.  In  the 
same  manner,  the  more  we  pervert  or  balk  the  great 
natural  impulses,  sexuality,  comradeship,  the  reli-" 
gious  emotion,  nativity,  or  the  more  we  deny  and 
belittle  our  bodies,  the'  further  we  are  from  the 
spirit  of  Walt  Whitman,  and  from  the  spirit  of  the 
All.^ 

With  all  Whitman's  glorification  of  pride,  self- 


222  WHITMAN 

esteem,  self-reliance,  etc.,  the  final  lesson  of  his  life 
and  work  is  service,  self-denial,  —  the  free,  lavish 
giving  of  yourself  to  others.  ^Of  the  innate  and 
essential  nobility  that  we  associate  with  unworldli- 
ness,  the  sharing  of  what  you  possess  with  the  un 
fortunate  around  you,  sympathy  with  all  forms  of 
life  and  conditions  of  men,  charity  as  broad  as  the 
sunlight,  standing  up  for  those  whom  others  are 
down  upon,  claiming  nothing  for  self  which  others 
may  not  have  upon  the  same  terms,  —  of  such  no 
bility  and  fine  manners,  I  say,  you  shall  find  an 
abundance  in  the  life  and  works  of  Walt  Whitman. 

The  spirit  of  a  man's  work  is  everything;  the 
letter,  little  or  nothing.  Though  WTiitman  boasts  of 
his  affiliation  with  the  common  and  near  at  hand, 
yet  he  is  always  saved  from  the  vulgar,  the  mean, 
the  humdrum,  by  the  breadth  of  his  charity  and 
sympathy  and  his  tremendous  ideality. 

Of  worldliness,  materialism,  commercialism,  he 
has  not  a  trace;  his  only  values  are  ^spiritual  and 
ideal;  his  only  standards  are  the  essential  and  the 
enduring.  I  What  Matthew  Arnold  called  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  contagion,  the  bourgeois  spirit,  the  worldly 
and  sordid  ideal,  is  entirely  corrected  in  Whitman 
by  the  ascendant  of  the  ethic  and  the  universal. 
His  democracy  ends  in  universal  brotherhood,  his 
patriotism  in  the  solidarity  of  nations,  his  glorifi 
cation  of  the  material  in  the  final  triumph  of  the 
spiritual,  his  egoism  issues  at  last  in  complete 
otherism. 

A  race  that  can  produce  a  man  of  his  fibre,  his 


HIS  RELATION  TO  CULTURE       223 

continental  type,  is  yet  at  its  best  estate.  Did  one 
begin  to  see  evil  omen  in  this  perpetual  whittling 
away  and  sharpening  and  lightening  of  the  Ameri 
can  type,  —  grace  without  power,  clearness  without 
mass,  intellect  without  character,  —  then  take  com 
fort  from  the  volume  and  the  rankness  of  Walt 
Whitman.  Did  one  begin  to  fear  that  the  decay 
of  maternity  and  paternity  in  our  older  communi 
ties  and  the  falling  off  in  the  native  population  pre 
saged  the  drying  up  of  the  race  in  its  very  sources  ? 
Then  welcome  to  the  rank  sexuality  and  to  the 
athletic  fatherhood  and  motherhood  celebrated  by 
Whitman.  Did  our  skepticism,  our  headiness,  our 
worldliness,  threaten  to  eat  us  up  like  a  cancer] 
did  our  hardness,  our  irreligiousness,  and  our  passion 
for  the  genteel  point  to  a  fugitive,  superficial  race  1 
was  our  literature  threatened  with  the  artistic  de 
generation,  —  running  all  to  art  and  not  at  all  to 
power?  were  our  communities  invaded  by  a  dry  rot 
of  culture  fl  were  we  fast  becoming  a  delicate,  in 
door,  genteel  race  y  were  our  women  sinking  deeper 
and  deeper  into  the  "incredible  sloughs  of  fashion 
and  all  kinds  of  dyspeptic  depletion,"  —  the  anti 
dote  for  all  these  ills  is  in  Walt  Whitman.  In 
him  nature  shows  great  fullness  and  fertility,  and 
an  immense  friendliness.  He  supplements  and  cor 
rects  most  of  the  special  deficiencies  and  weaknesses 
toward  which  the  American  type  seems  to  tend. 
/He  brings  us  back  to  nature  againX  The  perpetuity 
of  the  race  is  with  the  common  people.  The  race 
is  constantly  citing  out  at  the  top,  in  our  times  at 


224  WHITMAN 

least;  culture  and  refinement  beget  fewer  and  fewer 
and  poorer  and  poorer  children.  Where  struggle 
ceases,  that  family  or  race  is  doomed. 

"Now  understand  me  well  —  it  is  provided  in  the  essence  of 
things  that  from  any  fruition  of  success,  no  matter  what, 
shall  come  forth  something  to  make  a  greater  struggle 
necessary. "/ 

In  more  primitive  communities,  the  sap  and 
vitality  of  the  race  were  kept  in  the  best  men, 
because  upon  them  the  strain  and  struggle  were 
greatest.  War,  adventure,  discovery,  favor  viril 
ity.  Whitman  is  always  and  everywhere  occupied 
with  that  which  makes  for  life,  power,  longevity, 
manliness.  The  scholar  poets  are  occupied  with 
that  which  makes  for  culture,  taste,  refinement, 
ease,  art. 

'Leaves  of  Grass,"  taken  as  a  whole,  aims  to 
exhibit  a  modern,  democratic,  archetypal  man,  here 
in  America,  confronting  and  subduing  our  enor 
mous  materialism  to  his  own  purposes,  putting  it  off 
and  on  as  a  garment;  identifying  himself  with  all 
forms  of  life  and  conditions  of  men;  trying  him 
self  by  cosmic  laws  and  processes,  exulting  in  the 
life  of  his  body  and  the  delights  of  his  senses;  and 
seeking  to  clinch,  to  develop,  and  to  realize  himself 
through  the  shows  and  events  of  the  visible  world. 
The  poet  seeks  to  interpret  life  from  the  central 
oint  of  absolute  abysmal  man. 

The  wild  and  the  savage  in  nature  with  which 
Whitman  perpetually  identifies  himself,  and  the 
hirsute,  sun-tanned,  and  aboriginal  in  humanity, 


HIS  RELATION  TO  CULTURE       225 

have  misled  many  readers  into  looking  upon  him 
as  expressive  of  these  things  only.  Mr.  Stedman 
thinks  him  guilty  of  a  certain  narrowness  in  pre 
ferring,  or  seeming  to  prefer,  the  laboring  man  to 
the  gentleman.  But  the  poet  uses  these  elements 
only  for  checks  and  balances,  and  to  keep  our  atten 
tion,  in  the  midst  of  a  highly  refined  and  civilized 
age,  fixed  upon  the  fact^that  here  are  the  final 
sources  of  our  health,  our  power,  our  longevity.} 
The  need  of  the  pre-scientific  age  was  knowledge 
and  refinement ;  ^the  need  of  our  age  is  health  and 
sanity,  cool  heads  and  good  digestion,  i  And  to  this 
end  the  bitter  and  drastic  remedies  from  the  shore 
and  the  mountains  are  for  us. 

IX 

The  gospel  of  the  average  man,  Matthew  Arnold 
thought,  was  inimical  to  the  ideal  of  a  rare  and 
high  excellence.  But,  in  holding  up  the  average 
man,  Whitman  was  only  holding  up  the /broad,  uni 
versal  human  qualities,  and  showing  that  excellence 
may  go  with  them  also.\  As  a  matter  of  fact,  are 
we  not  astonished  almost  daily  by  the  superb  quali 
ties  shown  by  the  average  man,  the  heroism  shown 
by  firemen,  engineers,  workingmen,  soldiers,  sail 
ors?  Do  we  not  know  fchat  true  greatness,  true 
nobility  and  strength  of  soul,  may  go  and  do  go  with 
commonplace,  every-day  humanity  ?  )  Whitman  would 
lift  the  average  man  to  a  higher  average,  and  still 
to  a  higher,  without  at  all  weakening  the  qualities 
which  he  shares  with  universal  humanity  as  it  exists 


226  WHITMAN 

over  and  under  all  special  advantages  and  social 
refinements.  He  says  that  one  of  the  convictions 
that  underlie  his  "Leaves"  is  the  conviction  that 
the  "crowning  growth  of  the  United  States  is  to  be 
spiritual  and  heroic,"  —  a  prophecy  which  in  our 
times,  I  confess,  does  not  seem  very  near  fulfill 
ment. 

He  does  not  look  longingly  and  anxiously  toward 
the  genteel  social  gods,  but  quite  the  contrary.  In 
the  library  and  parlor,  he  confesses  he  is  as  a  gawk 
or  one  dumb.  The  great  middle-class  ideal,  which 
is  mainly  the  ideal  of  our  own  people,  Whitman 
flouts  and  affronts.  There  are  things  to  him  of 
higher  import  than  to  have  wealth  and  be  respec 
table  and  in  the  mode. 

We  might  charge  him  with  narrowness  and  par 
tiality  and  with  seeing  only  half  truths,  as  Mr. 
Stedman  has  done,  did  he  simply  rest  with  the 
native  as  opposed  to  the  cultivated,  with  brawn  as 
opposed  to  brains.  What  he  does  do,  what  the 
upshot  of  his  teaching  shows,  is  that^e  identifies 
himself  with  the  masses,  with  those  universal  human 
currents  out  of  which  alone  a  national  spirit  arises, 
as  opposed  to  isolated  schools  and  coteries  and  a 
privileged  few.^  Whitman  decries  culture  only  so 
far  as  it  cuts  a  man  off  from  his  fellows,  clips  away 
or  effaces  the  sweet,  native,  healthy  parts  of  him, 
and  begets  a  bloodless,  superstitious,  infidelistic 
class.  "The  best  culture,"  he  says,  "will  always 
be  that  of  the  manly  and  courageous  instincts  and 
loving  perceptions,  and  of  self-respect."  For  the 


HIS   RELATION   TO   CULTURE  227 

most  part,  our  schooling  is  like  our  milling,  which 
takes  the  bone  and  nerve  building  elements  out  of 
our  bread.  The  bread  of  life  demands  the  coarse 
as  well  as  the  fine,  and  this  is  what  Whitman 
stands  for. 

In  his  spirit  and  affiliation  with  the  great  mass 
of  the  people,  with  the  commoner,  sturdier,  human 
traits,  Whitman  is  more  of  the  type  of  Angelo,  or 
Rembrandt,  or  the  antique  bards,  than  he  is  like 
modern  singers.  He  was  not  a  product  of  the 
schools,  but  of  the  race. 


HIS    RELATION    TO   HIS   COUNTRY  AND 
HIS   TIMES 


IT  has  been  said,  and  justly  I  think,  that  in 
Whitman  we  see  the  first  appearance  in  literature 
of  the  genuinely  democratic  spirit  on  anything  like 
an  ample  scale.  Plenty  of  men  of  democratic  ten 
dencies  and  affiliations  have  appeared,  but  none  that 
have  carried  the  temper  and  quality  of  the  people, 
the  masses,  into  the  same  regions,  or  blended  the 
same  humanity  and  commonness  with  the  same  com 
manding  personality  and  spirituality.  In  recent 
English  poetry  the  names  of  Burns  and  Wordsworth 
occur  to  mind,  but  neither  of  these  men  had  any 
thing  like  Whitman's  breadth  of  relation  to  the 
mass  of  mankind,  or  expressed  anything  like  his 
sweeping  cosmic  emotion.  Wordsworth's  muse  was 
clad  in  homespun,  but  in  no  strict  sense  was  his 
genius  democratic  —  using  the  word  to  express,  not 
a  political  creed,  but  the  genius  of  modern  civili 
zation.  He  made  much  of  the  common  man,  com 
mon  life,  common  things,  but  always  does  the  poet 
stand  apart,  the  recluse,  the  hermit,  the  philosopher, 
loving  and  contemplating  these  things  for  purposes 
of  his  art.  Only  through  intellectual  sympathy  is 


230  WHITMAN 

he  a  part  of  what  he  surveys.  In  Whitman  the 
common  or  average  man  has  grown  haughty,  almost 
aristocratic.  He  coolly  confronts  the  old  types,  the 
man  of  caste,  culture,  privileges,  royalties,  and  rele 
gates  him  to  the  past.  He  readjusts  the  standards, 
and  estimates  everything  from  the  human  and  demo 
cratic  point  of  view.  In  his  scheme,  the  old  tra 
ditions —  the  aristocratic,  the  scholastic,  the  ecclesi 
astical,  the  military,  the  social  traditions  —  play  no 
part.  He  dared  to  look  at  life,  past  and  present, 
from  the  American  and  scientific  standpoint.  He 
turns  to  the  old  types  a  pride  and  complacency  equal 
to  their  own. 

Indeed,  we  see  in  the  character  which  Whitman 
has  exploited  and  in  the  interest  of  which  his  poems 
are  written,  the  democratic  type  fully  realized,  — 
pride  and  self-reliance  equal  to  the  greatest,  and 
these  matched  with  a  love,  a  compassion,  a  spirit  of 
fraternity  and  equality,  that  are  entirely  foreign  to 
the  old  order  of  things. 

ii 

At  first  sight  Whitman  does  not  seem  vitally 
related  to  his  own  country  and  people;  he  seems 
an  anomaly,  an  exception,  or  like  one  of  those 
mammoth  sports  that  sometimes  appear  in  the  vege 
table  world.  The  Whitman  ideal  is  not,  and  has 
never  been,  the  conscious  ideal  of  the  mass  of  our 
people.  We  have  aspired  more  to  the  ideal  of 
the  traditional  fine  gentleman  as  he  has  figured  in 
British  letters.  There  seems  to  have  been  no  hint 


HIS   RELATION   TO   HIS  COUNTRY  231 

or  prophecy  of  such  a  man  as  Whitman  in  our  New 
England  literature,  unless  it  be  in  Emerson,  and 
here  it  is  in  the  region  of  the  abstract  and  not  of 
the  concrete.  Emerson's  prayer  was  for  the  abso 
lutely  self-reliant  man,  but  when  Whitman  refused 
to  follow  his  advice  with  regard  to  certain  passages 
in  the  "Leaves,"  the  sage  withheld  further  approval 
of  the  work. 

We  must  look  for  the  origins  of  Whitman,  I 
think,  in  the  deep  world-currents  that  have  been 
shaping  the  destinies  of  the  race  for  the  past  hun 
dred  years  or  more;  in  the  universal  loosening, 
freeing,  and  removing  obstructions;  in  the  emanci 
pation  of  the  people,  and  their  coming  forward  and 
taking  possession  of  the  world  in  their  own  right ;  in 
the  triumph  of  democracy  and  of  science ;  the  down 
fall  of  kingcraft  and  priestcraft ;  the  growth  of  indi 
vidualism  and  non  -  conformity ;  the  increasing  dis 
gust  of  the  soul  of  man  with  forms  and  ceremonies; 
the  sentiment  of  realism  and  positivism,  the  reli 
gious  hunger  that  flees  the  churches ;  (the  growing 
conviction  that  life,  that  nature,  are  not  failures, 
that  the  universe  is  good,  that  man  is  clean  and 
divine  inside  and  out,  that  God  is  immanent  in 
nature,  —  all  these  things  and  more  lie  back  of 
Whitman,  and  hold  a  causal  relation  to  hinO 

in 

Of  course  the  essential  elements  of  all  first-class 
artistic  and  literary  productions  are  always  the 
same,  just  as  nature,  just  as  man,  are  essentially 


232  WHITMAN 

the  same  everywhere.  Yet  the  literature  of  every 
people  has  a  stamp  of  its  own,  starts  from  and  im 
plies  antecedents  and  environments  peculiar  to  it 
self. 

/^  Just  as  ripe,  mellow,  storied,  ivy-towered,  vel 
vet-turfed  England  lies  back  of  Tennyson,  and  is 
vocal  through  him;  just  as  canny,  covenanting,  con 
science-burdened,  craggy,  sharp-tongued  Scotland 
lies  back  of  Carlyle;  just  as  thrifty,  well-schooled, 
well-housed,  prudent,  and  moral  New  England  lies 
back  of  her  group  of  poets,  and  is  voiced  by  them, 
—  so  America  as  a  whole,  our  turbulent  democracy, 
our  self-glorification,  our  faith  in  the  future,  our 
huge  mass  movements,  our  continental  spirit,  our 
sprawling,  sublime,  and/ unkempt  nature,  lie  back  of 
Whitman  and  are  implied  by  his  work.) 
f  He  had  not  the  shaping,  manipulating  gift  to  carve 
his  American  material  into  forms  of  ideal  beauty, 
and  did  not  claim  to  have.  He  did  not  value 
beauty  as  an  abstraction. 

What  Whitman  *did  that  is  unprecedented  was, 
to  take  up  the  whole  country  into  himself,  fuse  it, 
imbue  it  with  soul  and  poetic  emotion,  and  recast  it 
as  a  sort  of  colossal  Walt  Whitman.  yHe  has  not 
so  much  treated  American  themes  as  he  has  identi 
fied  himself  with  everything  American,  and  made 
the  whole  land  redolent  of  his  own  quality  J  He 
has  descended  upon  the  gross  materialism  of  our 
day  and  land  and  upon  the  turbulent  democratic 
masses  with  such  loving  impact,  such  fervid  en 
thusiasm,  as  to  lift  and  fill  them  with  something 


HIS  RELATION   TO  HIS  COUNTRY  233 

like  the  (  breath  of  universal  nature  J  His  spe 
cial  gift  is  his  magnetic  and  unconquerable  per 
sonality,  his  towering  egoism  united  with  such  a  . 
fund  of  human  sympathy.  His  power  is  centripetal, 
so  to  speak,  —  he  draws  everything  into  himself 
like  a  maelstrom;  the  centrifugal  power  of  the 
great  dramatic  artists,  the  power  to  get  out  of  and 
away  from  himself,  he  has  not.  It  was  not  for 
Whitman  to  write  the  dramas  and  tragedies  of 
democracy,  as  Shakespeare  wrote  those  of  feudal 
ism,  or  as  Tennyson  sang  in  delectable  verse  the 
swan-song  of  an  overripe  civilization.  It  was  for 
him  to  voice  the  democratic  spirit,  to  show  it  full- 
grown,  athletic,  haughtily  taking  possession  of  the 
world  and  redistributing  the  prizes  according  to  its 
own  standards.  It  was  for  him  to  sow  broadcast 
over  the  land  the  germs  of  larger,  more  sane,  more 
robust  types  of  men  and  women,  indicating  them  in 
himself. 

In  him  the  new  spirit  of  democracy  first  com 
pletely  knows  itself,  is  proud  of  itself,  has  faith 
and  joy  in  itself,  is  fearless,  tolerant,  religious, 
aggressive,  triumphant,  and  bestows  itself  lavishly 
upon  all  sides.  It  is  tentative,  doubtful,  hesitat 
ing  no  longer.  It  is  at  ease  in  the  world,  it  takes 
possession,  it  fears  no  rival,  it  advances  with  confi 
dent  step. 

No  man  was  ever  more  truly  fathered  by  what  is 
formative  and  expansive  in  his  country  and  times 
than  was  Whitman.  Not  by  the  literature  of  his 
country  was  he  begotten,  but  by  the  spirit  that  lies 


234  WHITMAN 

back  of  all,  and  that  begat  America  itself,  —  the 
America  that  Europe  loves  and  fears,  that  she  comes 
to  this  country  to  see,  and  looks  expectantly,  but 
for  the  most  part  vainly,  in  our  books  to  find. 

It  seems  to  me  he  is  distinctly  a  continental  type. 
His  sense  of  space,  of  magnitude,  his  processional 
pages,  his  unloosedness,  his  wide  horizons,  his  van 
ishing  boundaries,  — always  something  unconfined 
and  unconfinable,  always  the  deferring  and  undemon- 
strable.  The  bad  as  well  as  the  good  traits  of  his 
country  and  his  people  are  doubtless  implied  £y  his 
work. 

If  he  does  not  finally  escape  from  our  unripe 
Americanism,  if  he  does  not  rise  through  it  all  and 
clarify  it  and  turn  it  to  ideal  uses,  draw  out  the 
spiritual  meanings,  then  avaunt!  we  want  nothing 
of  him. 

"  The  pleasures  of  heaven  are  with  me  and  the  pains  of  hell. 
The  former  I  graft  and  increase  upon  myself, 
The  latter  I  translate  into  a  new  tongue." 

The  vital  and  the  formative  the  true  poet  always 
engrafts  and  increases  upon  himself,  and  thence 
upon  his  reader;  the  crude,  the  local,  the  acciden 
tal,  he  translates  into  a  new  tongue.  It  has  been 
urged  against  Whitman  that  he  expresses  our  unripe 
Americanism  only,  but  serious  readers  of  him  know 
better  than  that.  He  is  easy  master  of  it  all,  and 
knows  when  his  foot  is  upon  solid  ground.  It 
seems  to  me  that  in  him  we  see  for  the  first  time 
spiritual  and  ideal  meanings  and  values  in  demo 
cracy  and  the  modern;  we  see  them  translated  into 


HIS  RELATION  TO   HIS   COUNTRY  235 

character ;  we  see  them  tried  by  universal  standards ; 
we  see  them  vivified  by  a  powerful  imagination. 
We  see  America  as  an  idea,  and  see  its  relation  to 
other  ideas.  HVe  get  a  new  conception  of  the  value 
of  the  near,  tne  common,  the  familiarA  New  light 
is  thrown  upon  the  worth  and  significance  of  the 
common  people,  and  it  is  not  the  light  of  an  ab 
stract  idea,  but  the  light  of  a  concrete  example. 
We  see  the  democratic  type  on  a  scale  it  has  never 
before  assumed;  it  is  on  a  par  with  any  of  the 
types  that  have  ruled  the  world  in  the  past,  the 
military,  the  aristocratic,  the  regal.  It  is  at  home, 
it  has  taken  possession,  it  can  hold  its  own.  Hence 
forth  the  world  is  going  its  way.  If  it  is  over 
confident,  over- self -assertive,  too  American,  that  is 
the  surplusage  of  the  poet,  of  whom  we  do  not  want 
a  penny  prudence  and  caution ;  make  your  prophecy 
bold  enough  and  it  fulfills  itself.  Whitman  has 
betrayed  no  doubt  or  hesitation  in  his  poetry.  His 
assumptions  and  vaticinations  are  tremendous,  but 
they  are  uttered  with  an  authority  and  an  assurance 
that  convince  like  natural  law. 

IV 

I  think  he  gives  new  meaning  to  democracy  and 
America.  In  him  we  see  a  new  type,  rising  out  of 
new  conditions,  and  fully  able  to  justify  itself  and 
hold  its  own.  It  is  the  new  man  in  the  new  world, 
no  longer  dependent  upon  or  facing  toward  the 
old.  I  confess  that  to  me  America  and  the  modern 
would  not  mean  very  much  without  Whitman. 


236  WHITMAN 

The  final  proof  was  wanting  till  they  gave  birth  to 
a  personality  equal  to  the  old  types. 

Discussions  and  speculations  about  democracy  do 
not  carry  very  far,  after  all;  to  preach  equality  is 
not  much.  But  when  we  see  these  things  made 
into  a  man,  and  see  the  world  through  his  eyes,  and 
see  new  joy  and  new  meaning  in  it,  our  doubts  and 
perplexities  are  cleared  up.  Our  universal  ballot 
ing,  and  schooling,  and  material  prosperity  prove 
nothing:  can  your  democracy  produce  a  man  who 
shall  carry  its  spirit  into  loftiest  regions,  and  prove 
as  helpful  and  masterful  under  the  new  conditions 
as  the  by-gone  types  were  under  the  old  1 


I  predict  a  great  future  for  Whitman,  because 
the  world  is  so  unmistakably  going  his  way.  The 
f  three  or  four  great  currents  of  the  century  —  the 
democratic  current,  the  scientific  current,  the  hu 
manitarian  current,  the  new  religious  current,  and 
what  flows  out  of  them  —  are  underneath  all  Whit 
man  has  written.  They  shape  all  and  make  all. 
They  do  not  appear  in  him  as  mere  dicta,  or  intel 
lectual  propositions,  but  as  impulses,  will,  character, 
flesh-and-blood  reality.  We  get  these  things,  not 
as  sentiments  or  yet  theories,  but  as  a  man.  We 
see  life  and  the  world  as  they  appear  to  the  inevit 
able  democrat,  the  inevitable  lover,  the  inevitable 
believer  in  God  and  immortality,  the  inevitable  ac 
ceptor  of  absolute  science. 

We  are  all  going  his  way.     We  are  more  and 


HIS  RELATION  TO  HIS  COUNTRY     237 

more  impatient  of  formalities,  ceremonies,  and  make- 
believe;  we  more  and  more  crave  the  essential, 
the  real.  More  and  more  we  want  to  see  the 
thing  as  in  itself  it  is;  more  and  more  is  science 
opening  our  eyes  to  see  the  divine,  the  illustrious, 
the  universal  in  the  common,  the  near  at  hand; 
more  and  more  do  we  tire  of  words  and  crave 
things;  deeper  and  deeper  sinks  the  conviction  that 
personal  qualities  alone  tell,  —  that  the  man  is  all  in 
all,  that  the  brotherhood  of  the  race  is  not  a  dream, 
tjiat  love  covers  all  and  atones  for  all. 
^  Everything  in  our  modern  life  and  culture  that 
tends  to  broaden,  liberalize,  free;  that  tends  to 
make  hardy,  self-reliant,  virile;  that  tends  to  widen 
charity,  deepen  affection  between  man  and  man,  to 
foster  sanity  and  self-reliance;  that  tends  to  kindle 
our  appreciation  of  the  divinity  of  all  things;  that 
heightens  our  rational  enjoyment  of  life;  that  in 
spires  hope  in  the  future  and  faith  in  the  unseen, 
—  are  on  Whitman's  side.  All  these  things  pre 
pare  the  way  for  hinA 

On  the  other  hand,  the  strain  and  strife  and  hog- 
gishness  of  our  civilization,  our  trading  politics,  our 
worship  of  conventions,  our  millionaire  ideals,  our 
high-pressure  lives,  our  pruriency,  our  sordidness, 
our  perversions  of  nature,  our  scoffing  caricaturing 
tendencies,  are  against  him.  He  antagonizes  all 
these  things. 

The  more  democratic  we  become,  the  more  we 
are  prepared  for  Whitman;  the  more  tolerant,  fra 
ternal,  sympathetic  we  become,  the  more  we  are 


238  WHITMAN 

ready  for  Whitman  c  the  more  we  inure  ourselves  to 
the  open  air  and  to  real  things,  the  more  we  value 
and  understand  our  own  bodies,  the  more  the 
woman  becomes  the  mate  and  equal  of  the  man,  the 
more  social  equality  prevails,  —  the  sooner  will  come 
to  Whitman  fullness  and  fruition. 

VI 

Some  of  our  own  critics  have  been  a  good  deal 
annoyed  by  the  fact  that  many  European  schol 
ars  and  experts  have  recognized  Whitman  as  the 
only  distinctive  American  poet  thus  far.  It  would 
seem  as  if  our  reputation  for  culture  and  good  man 
ners  is  at  stake.  We  want  Europe  to  see  America 
in  our  literary  poets  like  Lowell,  or  Longfellow,  or 
Whittier.  And  Europe  may  well  see  much  that 
is  truly  representative  of  America  in  these  and  in 
other  New  England  poets.  She  may  see  our  aspi 
ration  toward  her  own  ideals  of  culture  and  refine 
ment  ;  she  may  see  native  and  patriotic  themes  firing 
Lowell  and  Whittier;  she  may  see  a  certain  spirit 
and  temper  begotten  by  our  natural  environment 
reflected  in  Bryant,  our  delicate  and  gentle  humani 
ties  and  scholarly  aptitudes  shining  in  Longfellow. 
But  in  every  case  she  sees  a  type  she  has  long  been 
familiar  with.  All  the  poets'  thoughts,  moods, 
points  of  view,  effects,  aims,  methods,  are  what 
she  has  long  known.  These  are  not  the  poets  of 
a  new  world,  but  of  a  new  England.  The  new- 
world  book  implies  more  than  a  new  talent,  more 
than  a  fresh  pair  of  eyes,  a  fresh  and  original  mind 


HIS  RELATION   TO  HIS  COUNTRY  239 

like  the  poets  named;  such  men  are  required  to 
keep  up  the  old  line  of  succession  in  English  author 
ship.  What  is  implied  is  a  new  national  and  con 
tinental  spirit,  which  must  arise  and  voice  the  old 
eternal  truths  through  a  large,  new,  democratic  per 
sonality,  —  a  new  man,  and,  beyond  and  above  him, 
a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth. 

Our  band  of  New  England  poets  have  carried  the 
New  England  spirit  into  poetry,  —  its  sense  of  fit 
ness,  order,  propriety,  its  shrewdness,  inventive 
ness,  aptness,  and  its  aspiration  for  the  pure  and 
noble  in  life.  They  have  finely  exemplified  the 
best  Yankee  traits;  but  in  no  instance  were  these 
traits  merged  in  a  personality  large  enough,  bold 
enough,  and  copious  and  democratic  enough  to  give 
them  national  and  continental  significance.  It 
would  be  absurd  to  claim  that  the  pulse-beat  of 
a  great  people  or  a  great  era  is  to  be  felt  in  the 
work  of  any  of  these  poets. 

Whitman  is  responded  to  in  Europe,  because  he 
expresses  a  new  type  with  adequate  power,  —  not, 
as  has  been  so  often  urged,  simply  because  he  is 
strange,  and  gives  the  jaded  literary  palate  over 
there  a  new  fillip.  He  meets  the  demand  for  some 
thing  in  American  literature  that  should  not  face 
toward  Europe,  that  should  joyfully  stand  upon  its 
own  ground  and  yet  fulfill  the  conditions  of  great 
ness.  He  fully  satisfies  the  thirst  for  individual 
ism  amid  these  awakening  peoples,  and  the  thirst 
for  nationalism  also.  He  realizes  the  democratic 
ideal,  no  longer  tentative  or  apologetic,  but  taking 


240  WHITMAN 

possession  of  the  world  as  its  own  and  reappraising 
the  wares  it  finds  there. 


VII 

The  American  spirit  is  a  continental  spirit ;  there 
is  nothing  insular  or  narrow  about  it.  It  is  infor 
mal,  nonchalant,  tolerant,  sanguine,  adaptive,  pa 
tient,  candid,  puts  up  with  things,  unfastidious, 
unmindful  of  particulars;  disposed  to  take  short 
cuts,  friendly,  hospitable,  unostentatious,  inclined 
to  exaggerate,  generous,  unrefined,  —  never  meddle 
some,  never  hypercritical,  never  hoggish,  never  ex 
clusive.  Whitman  shared  the  hopeful  optimistic 
temperament  of  his  countrymen,  the  faith  and  con 
fidence  begotten  by  a  great,  fertile,  sunny  land.  He 
expresses  the  independence  of  the  people,  —  their 
pride,  their  jealousy  of  superiors,  their  contempt  of 
authority  (not  always  beautiful).  Our  want  of  rev 
erence  and  veneration  are  supplemented  in  him  with 
world-wide  sympathies  and  good-fellowship. 

Emerson  is  our  divine  man,  the  precious  quint 
essence  of  the  New  England  type,  invaluable  for 
his  stimulating  and  ennobling  strain;  but  his  gen 
ius  is  too  astral,  too  select,  too  remote,  to  incarnate 
and  give  voice  to  the  national  spirit.  Clothe  him 
with  flesh  and  blood,  make  his  daring  affirmations 
real  and  vital  in  a  human  personality  and  imbued 
with  the  American  spirit,  and  we  are  on  the  way 
to  Whitman. 

Moreover,  the  strong,  undisguised  man-flavor  of 
"Leaves  of  Grass,"  the  throb  and  pressure  in  it  of 


HIS   RELATION   TO   HIS   COUNTRY  241 

those  tilings  that  make  life  rank  and  make  it  mas 
terful,  and  that  make  for  the  virility  and  perpetuity 
of  the  race,  are,  if  it  must  be  confessed,  more  keenly 
relished  abroad  than  in  this  country,  so  thoroughly 
are  we  yet  under  the  spell  of  the  merely  refined  and 
conventional.  We  fail  to  see  that  in  letters,  as  in 
life,  the  great  prizes  are  not  to  the  polished,  but  to 
the  virile  and  the  strong. 

VIII  J 

Democracy  is  not  so  much  spoken  of  in  the 
"  Leaves  "  as  it  is  it  that  speaks.  The  common, 
the  familiar,  are  not  denied  and  left  behind,  they 
are  made  vital  and  masterful;  it  is  the  "divine 
average "  that  awakens  enthusiasm.  Humanity  is 
avenged  upon  the  scholar  and  the  "gentleman"  for 
the  slights  they  have  put  upon  it;  creeds  and 
schools  in  abeyance ;  personal  qualities,  force  of 
character,  to  the  front.  Whitman  triumphs  over 
the  mean,  the  vulgar,  the  commonplace,  by  accept 
ing  them  and  imbuing  them  with  the  spirit  of  an 
heroic  ideal.  Wherever  he  reveals  himself  in  his 
work,  it  is  as  one  of  the  common  people,  never  as 
one  of  a  coterie  or  of  the  privileged  and  cultivated. 
He  is  determined  there  shall  be  no  mistake  about 
it.  He  glories  in  the  common  heritage.  He  em 
phasizes  in  himself  the  traits  which  he  shares  with 
workingmen,  sailors,  soldiers,  and  those  who  live 
in  the  open  air,  even  laying  claim  to  the  "rowdy- 
ish."  He  is  proud  of  freckles,  sun-tan,  brawn,  and 
holds  up  the  powerful  and  unrefined. 


242  WHITMAN 

"  I  am  enamor'd  of  growing  out-doors, 

Of  men  that  live  among  cattle  or  taste  of  the  ocean  or  woods, 

Of  the  builders  and  steerers  of  ships  and  the  wielders  of  axes  and 

mauls,  and  the  drivers  of  horses  ; 
I  can  eat  and  sleep  with  them  week  in  and  week  out." 

" Nothing  endures, "  he  says,  "but  personal  quali 
ties."  "Produce  great  persons  and  the  rest  fol 
lows.  "  Does  he  glory  in  the  present  ?  he  reverently 
bows  before  the  past  also.  Does  he  sound  the  call 
of  battle  for  the  Union  1  but  he  nourishes  the  sick 
and  wounded  of  the  enemy  as  well.  Does  he  flout 
at  the  old  religions'?  but  he  offers  a  larger  religion 
in  their  stead.  He  is  never  merely  negative,  he  is 
never  fanatical,  he  is  never  narrow.  He  sees  all 
and  embraces  and  encloses  all. 

Then  we  see  united  and  harmonized  in  Whitman 
the  two  great  paramount  tendencies  of  our  time  and 
of  the  modern  world,  —  the  altruistic  or  humani 
tarian  tendency  and  the  individualistic  tendency; 
or,  democracy  and  individualism,  pride  and  equality, 
or,  rather,  pride  in  equality.  These  two  forces,  as 
they  appear  in  separate  individuals,  are  often  antago 
nistic.  \  In  Carlyle,  individualism  frowned  upon 
democracy.  In  Whitman  they  are  blended  and 
work  together^  Never  was  such  audacious  and  un 
compromising'  individualism,  and  never  was  such 
bold  and  sweeping  fraternalism  or  otherism.  The 
great  pride  of  man  in  himself,  which  is  one  motif 
of  the  poems,  flows  naturally  into  the  great  pride  of 
man  in  his  fellows;  his  egoism  does  not  separate 
him  from,  but  rather  unites  him  with,  all  men. 
What  he  assumes  they  shall  assume,  and  what  he 


HIS   RELATION   TO   HIS  COUNTRY  243 

claims  for  himself  he  demands  in  the  same  terms 
for  all.  He  has  set  such  an  example  of  self-trust 
and  self-assertion  as  has  no  parallel  in  our  litera 
ture,  at  the  same  time  that  he  has  set  an  equal 
example  in  practical  democracy  and  universal  bro 
therhood. 

IX 

Whitman's  democracy  is  the  breath  of  his  nos 
trils,  the  light  of  his  eyes,  the  blood  in  his  veins. 
The  reader  does  not  feel  that  here  is  some  fine 
scholar,  some  fine  poet  singing  the  praises  of  demo 
cracy;  he  feels  that  here  is  a  democrat,  probably,  as 
Thoreau  surmised,  the  greatest  the  world  has  yet 
seen,  turning  the  light  of  a  great  love,  a  great  in 
tellect,  a  great  soul,  upon  America,  upon  contem 
porary  life  and  events,  and  upon  the  universe,  and 
reading  new  lessons,  new  meanings,  therein.  He 
is  a  great  poet  and  prophet,  speaking  through  the 
average  man,  speaking  as  one  of  the  people,  and 
interpreting  life  from  the  point  of  view  of  absolute 
democracy. 

True,  the  people  in  their  average  taste  and  per 
ceptions  are  crude  and  flippant  and  superficial,  and 
often  the  victims  of  mountebanks  and  fools;  yet, 
as  forming  the  body  of  our  social  and  political  or 
ganism,  and  the  chief  factor  in  the  world-problem 
of  to-day,  they  are  the  exponents  of  great  forces 
and  laws,  and  often,  in  emergencies,  show  the  wis 
dom  and  unimpeachableness  of  Nature  herself. 
Deep-hidden  currents  and  forces  in  them  are  liable 
to  come  to  the  surface,  and  when  the  politicians 


244  WHITMAN 

get  in  their  way,  or  miscalculate  them,  as  so  often 
happens,  they  are  crushed.  Whitman  is  a  projec 
tion  into  literature  of  the  cosmic  sense  and  con 
science  of  the  people,  and  their  participation  in  the 
forces  that  are  shaping  the  world  in  our  century. 
Much  comes  to  a  head  in  him.  Much  comes  to 
joyous  speech  and  song,  that  heretofore  had  only 
come  to  thought  and  speculation.  A  towering,  au 
dacious  personality  has  appeared  which  is  strictly 
the  fruit  of  the  democratic  spirit,  and  which  has 
voiced  itself  in  an  impassioned  utterance  touching 
the  whole  problem  of  national  and  individual  life. 

x 

*  The  Whitman  literature  is  democratic,  not  in  the 
sense  that  it  caters  to  the  taste  of  the  masses  or  to 
the  taste  of  the  average  man;  for,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  masses  and  the  average  man  are  likely  to 
be  the  last  to  recognize  its  value.  The  common 
people,  the  average  newspaper-reading  citizens,  are 
much  more  likely  to  be  drawn  by  the  artificial  and  <f 
the  conventional.  But  it  is  democratic  because  it 
is  filled  with  the  spirit  of  absolute  human  equality  \ 
and  brotherhood,  and  gives  out  the  atmosphere  of  » 
the  universal,  primary,  human  traits.  The  social, 
artificial,  accidental  distinctions  of  wealth,  culture, 
position,  etc.,  have  not  influenced  the  poet  in  the 
slightest  degree.  Whitman  finds  his  joy  and  his 
triumph,  not  in  being  better  than  other  people  or 
above  them,  but  in  being  one  with  them,  and  shar 
ing  their  sins  as  well  as  their  virtues. 


HIS  RELATION  TO  HIS  COUNTRY     245 

"  As  if  it  harm'd  me,  giving  others  the  same  chances  and  rights  as 
myself —  as  if  it  were  not  indispensable  to  my  own  rights 
that  others  possess  the  same." 

This  is  one  step  further  than  others  have  taken, 
and  makes  democracy  complete  in  itself.  Again, 
his  work  identifies  itself  with  the  democratic  ideal 
in  getting  rid  of  the  professional  and  arbitrary  ele 
ments  of  poetry,  and  appealing  to  the  reader  entirely 
through  its  spirit  and  content.  It  is  as  democratic 
in  this  respect  as  the  workman  in  the  field,  or  the 
mechanic  at  his  bench. 

The  poems  are  bathed  and  flooded  with  the  qual 
ity  of  the  common  people ;  with  the  commonness 
and  nearness  which  they  share  with  real  things  and 
with  all  open-air  nature,  —  with  hunters,  travelers, 
soldiers,  workers  in  all  fields,  and  with  rocks,  trees, 
and  woods.  It  is  only  in  the  spirit  of  these  things 
that  a  man  himself  can  have  health,  sweetness,  and 
proportion;  and  only  in  their  spirit  that  he  can 
give  an  essentially  sound  judgment  of  a  work  of 
art,  no  matter  what  the  subject  of  it  may  be. 

This  spirit  of  the  "commonest,  cheapest,  near 
est  "  is  the  only  spirit  in  which  man's  concrete 
life  can  be  carried  forward.  We  do  not  live  and 
breathe  and  grow  and  multiply,  we  do  not  have 
health  and  sanity  and  wholeness  and  proportion,  we 
do  not  subdue  and  improve  and  possess  the  earth,  in 
the  spirit  of  something  exclusive,  exceptional,  far 
away,  aristocratic,  but  in  the  spirit  of  the  common 
and  universal.  The  only  demand  is  that,  in  a  work 
of  art,  the  common  or  universal  shall  be  vitalized 


246  WHITMAN 

with  poetic  thought  and  enthusiasm,  or  imbued 
with  the  ideal  of  a  rare  and  high  excellence. 

XI 

Our  critics  have  been  fond  of  taunting  Whitman 
with  the  fact  that  the  common  people,  the  workers, 
of  whom  he  makes  so  much,  and  to  whom  he  per 
petually  appeals,  do  not  read  him,  or  show  any 
liking  for  his  poems  at  all. 

Whitman's  appeal  to  the  common  people,  to  the 
democratic  masses,  is. an  appeal  to  the  future;  it  is 
an  appeal  to  the  universal  human  conscience  and 
intelligence,  as  they  exist  above  and  beneath  all 
special  advantages  of  birth  and  culture  and  stand 
related  to  the  total  system  of  things.  It  also  calls 
attention  to  the  fact  that  the  spirit  in  which  he 
writes,  and  in  which  he  is  to  be  read,  is  the  spirit 
of  open-air  life  and  nature. 

"  No  school  or  shutter'd  room  commune  with  me, 
But  roughs  and  little  children,  better  than  they, " 

because  the  simple,  unforced,  unrefined  elements  of 
human  nature  are  those  out  of  which  the  poems 
sprang  and  with  which  they  are  charged.  Their 
spirit  is  closer  akin  to  unlettered  humanity  than  to 
the  over- intellectual  and  sophisticated  products  of 
the  schools. 

Of  course  "  roughs  and  little  children  "  can  make 
nothing  of  "  Leaves  of  Grass, "  but  unless  the  trained 
reader  has  that  fund  of  fresh,  simple,  wholesome  na 
ture,  and  the  love  for  real  things,  which  unlettered  hu 
manity  possesses,  he  will  make  nothing  of  it  either. 


HIS  RELATION  TO  HIS  COUNTRY     247 


XII 

It  has  been  truly  said  that  "the  noblest  seer  is 
ever  over-possessed."  This  has  been  the  case  with 
nearly  all  original,  first-class  men.  Carlyle  fur 
nished  a  good  illustration  of  its  truth  in  our  own 
time.  He  was  over-possessed  with  his  idea  of  the 
hero  and  hero-worship.  And  it  may  be  that  Whit 
man  was  over-possessed  with  the  idea  of  democracy, 
America,  nationality,  and  the  need  of  a  radically  new 
departure  in  poetic  literature.  Yet  none  knew 
better  than  he  that  in  the  long  run  the  conditions 
of  life  and  of  human  happiness  and  progress  remain 
about  the  same;  that  the  same  price  must  still  be 
paid  for  the  same  things;  that  character  alone 
counts;  that  the  same  problem  "how  to  live  "  ever 
confronts  us;  and  that  democracy,  America,  nation 
ality,  are  only  way  stations,  and  by  no  means  the 
end  of  the  route.  The  all-leveling  tendency  of  de 
mocracy  is  certainly  not  in  the  interest  of  litera 
ture.  The  world  is  not  saved  by  the  average  man, 
but  by  the  man  much  above  the  average,  the  rare 
and  extraordinary  man,  —  by  the  "  remnant, "  as  Ar 
nold  called  them. 

No  one  knew  this  better  than  Whitman,  and 
he  said  that  "  one  main  genesis-motive "  of  his 
"Leaves"  was  the  conviction  that  the  crowning 
growth  of  the  United  States  was  to  be  spiritual  and 
heroic.  Only  "superb  persons  "  can  finally  justify 
him. 


HIS   KELATION   TO   SCIENCE 


THE  stupendous  disclosures  of  modern  science, 
and  what  they  mean  when  translated  into  the  lan 
guage  of  man's  ethical  and  aesthetic  nature,  have 
not  yet  furnished  to  any  considerable  extent  the 
inspiration  of  poems.  That  all  things  are  alike 
divine,  that  this  earth  is  a  star  in  the  heavens,  that 
the  celestial  laws  and  processes  are  here  underfoot, 
that  size  is  only  relative,  that  good  and  bad  are  only 
relative,  that  forces  are  convertible  and  interchange 
able,  that  matter  is  indestructible,  that  death  is  the 
law  of  life,  that  man  is  of  animal  origin,  that  the 
sum  of  forces  is  constant,  that  the  universe  is  a 
complexus  of  powers  inconceivably  subtle  and  vital, 
that  motion  is  the  law  of  all  things,  —  in  fact,  that 
we  have  got  rid  of  the  notions  of  the  absolute,  the 
fixed,  the  arbitrary,  and  the  notion  of  origins  and 
of  the  dualism  of  the  world,  —  to  what  extent  will 
.these  and  kindred  ideas  modify  art  and  all  aBsthetic 
production?  The  idea  of  the  divine  right  of  kings 
and  the  divine  authority  of  priests  is  gone;  that,  in 
some  other  time  or  some  other  place  God  was  nearer 
man  than  now  and  here,  —  this  idea  is  gone.  In 
deed,  the  whole  of  man's  spiritual  and  religious 
belief  which  forms  the  background  of  literature  has 


250  WHITMAN 

changed,  —  a  change  as  great  as  if  the  sky  were  to 
change  from  blue  to  red  or  to  orange.  The  light 
of  day  is  different.  But  literature  deals  with  life, 
and  the  essential  conditions  of  life,  you  say,  al 
ways  remain  the  same.  Yes,  but  the  expression 
of  their  artistic  values  is  forever  changing.  If  we 
ask  where  is  the  modern  imaginative  work  that  is 
based  upon  these  revelations  of  science,  the  work 
in  which  they  are  the  blood  and  vital  juices,  I  an 
swer,  "Leaves  of  Grass,"  and  no  other.  The  work 
is  the  outgrowth  of  science  and  modern  ideas,  just 
as  truly  as  Dante  is  the  outgrowth  of  mediaeval 
ideas  and  superstitions;  and  the  imagination,  the 
creative  spirit,  is  just  as  unhampered  in  Whitman 
as  in  Dante  or  in  Shakespeare.  ^  The  poet  finds  the 
universe  just  as  plastic  arid  ductile,  just  as  obedi 
ent  to  his  will,  and  just  as  ready  to  take  the  im 
press  of  his  spirit,  as  did  these  supreme  artists. 
Science  has  not  hardened  it  at  all.  The  poet  op 
poses  himself  to  it,  and  masters  it  and  rises  superior. 
He  is  not  balked  or  oppressed  for  a  moment.  He 
knows  from  the  start  what  science  can  bring  him, 
what  it  can  give,  and  what  it  can  take  away;  he 
knows  the  universe  is  not  orphaned;  he  finds  more 
grounds  than  ever  for  a  psean  of  thanksgiving  and 
praise.  His  conviction  of  the  identity  of  soul  and 
body,  matter  and  spirit,  does  not  shake  his  faith  in 
immortality  in  the  least.  His  faith  arises,  not  from 
half  views,  but  from  whole  views.  In  him  the  idea 
of  the  soul,  of  humanity,  of  identity,  easily  balanced 
the  idea  of  the  material  universe.  Man  was  more 


HIS  RELATION  TO  SCIENCE  251 

than  a  match  for  nature.  It  was  all  for  him,  and 
not  for  itself.  His  enormous  egotism,  or  hold  upon 
the  central  thought  or  instinct  of  human  worth  and 
import,  was  an  anchor  that  never  gave  way.  Sci 
ence  sees  man  as  the  ephemeron  of  an  hour,  an  iri 
descent  bubble  on  a  seething,  whirling  torrent,  an 
accident  in  a  world  of  incalculable  and  clashing 
forces.  Whitman  sees  him  as  inevitable  and  as  im 
mortal  as  God  himself.  Indeed,  he  is  quite  as  ego 
tistical  and  anthropomorphic,  though  in  an  entirely 
different  way,  as  were  the  old  bards  and  prophets 
before  the  advent  of  science.  •  The  whole  import  of 
the  universe  is  directed  to  one  man,  —  to  you.  His 
anthropomorphism  is  not  a  projection  of  himself 
into  nature,  but  an  absorption  of.  nature  in  himself. 
The  tables  are  turned.  It  is  not  alien  or  super 
human  beings  that  he  sees  and  hears  in  nature,  but 
his  own  that  he  finds  everywhere.  All  gods  are 
merged  in  himself. 

Not  the  least  fear,  not  the  least  doubt  or  dis 
may,  in  this  book.  Not  one  moment's  hesitation 
or  losing  of  the  way.  And  it  is  not  merely  an  in 
tellectual  triumph,  but  the  triumph  of  soul  and  per 
sonality.  The  iron  knots  are  not  untied,  they  are 
melted.  Indeed,  the  poet's  contentment  and  triumph 
in  view  of  the  fullest  recognition  of  all  the  sin  and 
sorrow  of  the  world,  and  of  all  that  baffles  and 
dwarfs,  is  not  the  least  of  the  remarkable  features 
of  the  book. 


252  WHITMAN 

II 

Whitman's  relation  to  science  is  fundamental  and 
vital.  It  is  the  soil  under  his  feet.  He  comes 
into  a  world  from  which  all  childish  fear  and  illu 
sion  has  been  expelled.  He  exhibits  the  religious 
and  poetic  faculties  perfectly  adjusted  to  a  scien 
tific,  industrial,  democratic  age,  and  exhibits  them 
more  fervent  and  buoyant  than  ever  before.  We 
have  gained  more  than  we  have  lost.  The  world  is 
anew  created  by  science  and  democracy,  and  he  pro 
nounces  it  good  with  the  joy  and  fervor  of  the  old 
faith. 

He  shared  with  Tennyson  the  glory  of  being  one 
of  the  two  poets  of  note  in  our  time  who  have 
drawn  inspiration  from  this  source,  or  viewed  the 
universe  through  the  vistas  which  science  opens. 
Renan  thought  the  modern  poetic  or  imaginative 
contemplation  of  the  universe  puerile  and  factitious 
compared  with  the  scientific  contemplation  of  it. 
The  one,  he  said,  was  stupendous;  the  other  child 
ish  and  empty.  But  Whitman  and  Tennyson  were 
fully  abreast  with  science,  and  often  afford  one  a 
sweep  of  vision  that  matches  the  best  science  can 
do.  Tennyson  drew  upon  science  more  for  his 
images  and  illustrations  than  Whitman  did;  he  did 
not  absorb  and  appropriate  its  results  in  the  whole 
sale  way  of  the  latter.  Science  fed  Whitman's 
imagination  and  made  him  bold;  its  effects  were 
moral  and  spiritual.  On  Tennyson  its  effects  were 
mainly  intellectual ;  it  enlarged  his  vocabulary  with- 


HIS  RELATION  TO  SCIENCE  253 

out  strengthening  his  faith.  Indeed,  one  would  say, 
from  certain  passages  in  "In  Memoriam,"  that  it 
had  distinctly  weakened  his  faith.  Let  us  note  for 
a  moment  the  different  ways  these  two  poets  use  sci 
ence.  In  his  poem  to  Fitzgerald,  Tennyson  draws 
upon  the  nebular  hypothesis  for  an  image :  — 

"  A  planet  equal  to  the  sun 
Which  cast  it,  that  large  infidel 
Your  Omar." 

In  "  Despair "  there  crops  out  another  bold  infer 
ence  of  science,  the  vision  "of  an  earth  that  is 
dead." 

"  The  homeless  planet  at  length  will  be  wheel'd  thro'  the  silence 

of  space, 
Motherless  evermore  of  an  ever-vanishing  race." 

In  the  "Epilogue"  he  glances  into  the  sidereal 
heavens : — 

"  The  fires  that  arch  this  dusky  dot  — 

Yon  myriad-worlded  way  — 
The  vast  sun-clusters'  gather'd  blaze, 

World-isles  in  lonely  skies, 
Whole  heavens  within  themselves,  amaze 

Our  brief  humanities." 

As  our  American  poet  never  elaborates  in  the 
Tennysonian  fashion,  he  does  not  use_  science  as 
material,  but  as  inspiration.  His  egoism  and  an 
thropomorphic  tendency  are  as  great  as  those  of  the 
early  bards,  and  he  makes  everything  tell  for  the 
individual.  Let  me  give  a  page  or  two  from  the 
"Song  of  Myself,"  illustrative  of  his  attitude  in 
this  respect :  — 

"I  find  I  incorporate  gneiss,  coal,  long-threaded   moss,    fruits, 

grains,  esculent  roots, 
And  am  stuccoed  with  quadrupeds  and  birds  all  over, 


254  WHITMAN 

And  have  distanced  what  is  behind  me  for  good  reasons, 
And  call  anything  close  again,  when  I  desire  it. 

"In  vain  the  speeding  or  shyness, 

In  vain  the  plutonic  rocks  send  their  old  heat  against  any  ap 
proach, 

In  vain  the  mastodon  retreats  beneath  its  own  powdered  bones, 
In  vain  objects  stand  leagues  off,  and  assume  manifold  shapes, 
In  vain  the  ocean  settling  in  hollows,  and  the  great  monsters  ly 
ing  low, 

In  vain  the  buzzard  houses  herself  with  the  sky, 
In  vain  the  snake  slides  through  the  creepers  and  logs, 
In  vain  the  elk  takes  to  the  inner  passes  of  the  woods, 
In  vain  the  razor-billed  auk  sails  far  north  to  Labrador, 
I  follow  quickly,  I  ascend  to  the  nest  in  the  fissure  of  the  cliff. 

"I  am  an  acme  of  things  accomplished,  and  I  an  endorser  of 

things  to  be. 

My  feet  strike  an  apex  of  the  apices  of  the  stairs, 
On  every  step  bunches  of  ages,  and  large  bunches  between  the 

steps, 
All  below  duly  traveled,  and  still  I  mount  and  mount. 

"  Rise  after  rise  bow  the  phantoms  behind  me, 

Afar  down  I  see  the  huge  first  Nothing — I  know  I  was  even 

there, 

I  waited  unseen  and  always,  and  slept  through  the  lethargic  mist, 
And  took  my  time,  and  took  no  hurt  from  the  fetid  carbon. 

"Long  I  was  hugged  close  — long  and  long. 
Immense  have  been  the  preparations  for  me, 
Faithful  and  friendly  the  arms  that  have  helped  me, 
Cycles  ferried  my  cradle,  rowing  and  rowing  like  cheerful  boat 
men, 

For  room  to  me  stars  kept  aside  in  their  own  rings, 
They  sent  influences  to  look  after  what  was  to  hold  me. 

"Before  I  was  born  out  of  my  mother,  generations  guided  me, 
My  embryo  has  never  been  torpid  —  nothing  could  overlay  it. 
For  it  the  nebula  cohered  to  an  orb, 
The  long,  slow  strata  piled  to  rest  it  in, 
Vast  vegetables  gave  it  sustenance, 

Monstrous  sauroids  transported  it  in  their  mouths,  and  deposited 
it  with  care. 


HIS  RELATION  TO   SCIENCE  255 

All  forces  have  been  steadily  employed  to  complete  and  delight 

me, 
Now  I  stand  on  this  spot  with  my  Soul. 

"  I  open  my  scuttle  at  night  and  see  the  far-sprinkled  systems, 
And  all  I  see,  multiplied  as  high  as  I  can  cipher,  edge  but  the 

rim  of  the  farther  systems  : 

Wider  and  wider  they  spread,  expanding,  always  expanding, 
Outward,  outward,  and  forever  outward  : 
My  sun  has  his  sun,  and  around  him  obediently  wheels  ;      '    - 
He  joins  with  his  partners  a  group  of  superior  circuit, 
And  greater  sets  follow,  making  specks  of  the  greatest  inside 

them. 

"  There  is  no  stoppage,  and  never  can  be  stoppage. 
If  I,  you,  the  worlds,  all  beneath  or  upon  their  surfaces,  and  all 
the  palpable  life,  were  this  moment  reduced  back  to  a  pal 
lid  float,  it  would  not  avail  in  the  long  run. 
We  should  surely  bring  up  again  where  we  now  stand, 
And  as  surely  go  as  much  farther  —  and  then  farther  and  far 
ther. 
A  few  quadrillions  of  eras,  a  few  octillions  of  cubic  leagues,  do 

not  hazard  the  span  or  make  it  impatient. 
They  are  but  parts  —  anything  is  but  a  part, 
See  ever  so  far,  there  is  limitless  space  outside  of  that, 
Count  ever  so  much,  there  is  limitless  time  around  that." 

In  all  cases,  Whitman's  vision  is  as  large  as  that  of 
science,  but  it  is  always  the  vision  of  a  man  and 
not  that  of  a  philosopher.  His  report  of  the  facts 
has  an  imaginative  lift  and  a  spiritual  significance 
which  the  man  of  science  cannot  give  them.  In 
him,  for  the  first  time,  a  personality  has  appeared 
that  cannot  be  dwarfed  and  set  aside  by  those 
things.  He  does  not  have  to  stretch  himself  at  all 
to  match  in  the  human  and  emotional  realm  the 
stupendous  discoveries  and  deductions  of  science. 
In  him  man  refuses  to  stand  aside  and  acknowledge 
himself  of  no  account  in  the  presence  of  the  cosmic 


256  WHITMAN 

laws  and  areas.  It  is  all  for  him,  it  is  all  directed 
to  him;  without  him  the  universe  is  an  empty  void. 
This  is  the  "full-spread  pride  of  man,"  the  pride 
that  refuses  to  own  any  master  outside  of  itself. 

"  I  know  my  omnivorous  words,  and  cannot  say  any  less, 
And  would  fetch  you,  whoever  you  are,  flush  with  myself." 


HIS  EELATION  TO  BELIGION 

WHITMAN,  as  I  have  elsewhere  said,  was  swayed 
by  twa-Qr_tkree._^reat  .passions,  and  the  chief  of 
these  was  doubtless  his  religious  passion.  He 
thrilled  to  the  thought  of  the  mystery  and  destiny 
of  the  soul. 

"  The  soul, 

Forever  and  forever  —  longer  than   soil  is  brown  and  solid  — 
longer  than  water  ebbs  and  flows." 

He  urged  that  there  could  be  no  permanent  na 
tional  grandeur,  and  no  worthy  manly  or  womanly 
development,  without  religion. 

"I  specifically  announce  that  the  real  and  permanent  grandeur 

of  these  States  must  be  their  Religion, 
Otherwise  there  is  no  real  and  permanent  grandeur." 

All  materials  point  to  and  end  at  last  in  spiritual 
results. 

"  Each  is  not  for  its  own  sake, 

I  say  the  whole  earth  and  all  the  stars  in  the  sky  are  for  Reli 
gion's  sake." 

All  our  ostensible  realities,  our  art,  our  literature, 
our  business  pursuits,  etc.,  are  but  fuel  to  religion. 

"For  not  all  matter  is  fuel  to  heat,  impalpable  flame,  the  essen 
tial  life  of  the  earth, 
Any  more  than  such  are  to  Religion." 

Again  he  says :  — 

"  My  Comrade  ! 

For  you  to  share  with  me  two  greatnesses  —  And  a  third  one, 

rising  inclusive  and  more  resplendent, 
The  greatness  of  Love  and  Democracy  —  and  the  greatness  of 

Religion." 


258  WHITMAN 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  the  religion 
which  Whitman  celebrates  is  not  any  form  of  eccle- 
siasticism.  It  was  larger  than  any  creed  that  has 
yet  been  formulated.  It  was  the  conviction  of  the 
man  of  science  touched  and  vivified  by  the  emotion 
of  the  prophet  and  poet.  As  exemplified  in  his 
life  its  chief  elements  were  faith,  hope,  charity. 
Its  object  was  to  prepare  you  to  live,  not  to  die,  and 
to  "  earn  for  the  body  and  the  mind  what  adheres 
and  goes  forward,  and  is  not  dropped  by  death." 

The  old  religion,  the  religion  of  our  fathers,  was 
founded  upon  a  curse.  Sin,  repentance,  fear,  Satan, 
hell,  play  important  parts.  Creation  had  resulted 
in  a  tragedy  in  which  the  very  elemental  forces 
were  implicated.  The  grand  scheme  of  an  infinite 
Being  failed  through  the  machinations  of  the  Devil. 
Salvation  was  an  escape  from  a  wrath  to  come. 
The  way  was  through  agony  and  tears.  (Heaven 
was  only  gained  by  denying  earth.  )  The  great  mass 
of  the  human  race  was  doomed  to  endless  perdition. 
Now  there  is  no  trace  of  this  religion  in  Whitman, 
and  it  does  not  seem  to  have  left  any  shadow  upon 
him.  Ecclesiasticism  is  dead;  he  clears  the  ground 
for  a  new  growth.  To  the  priests  he  says:  "Your 
day  is  done." 

'  He  sings  a  new  song;  he  tastes  a  new  joy  in 
life.  The  earth  is  as  divine  as  heaven,  and  there 
is  no  god  more  sacred  than  yourself.  It  is  as  if  the 
world  had  been  anew  created,  and  Adam  had  once 
more  been  placed  in  the  garden,  —  the  world,  with 
all  consequences  of  the  fall,  purged  from  him. 


HIS   RELATION  TO  RELIGION  259 

Hence  we  have  in  Whitman  the  whole  human 
attitude  towards  the  universe,  towards  God,  towards 
life  and  death,  towards  good  and  evil,  completely 
changed.  We  have  absolute  faith  and  acceptance 
in  place  of  the  fear  and  repentance  of  the  old 
creeds;  we  have  death  welcomed  as  joyously  as 
life,  we  have  political  and  social  equality  as  motifs 
and  impulses,  and  not  merely  as  sentiments.  He 
would  show  us  the  muse  of  poetry,  as  impartial,  as 
sweeping  in  its  vision,  as  modern,  as  real,  as  free 
from  the  morbid  and  make-believe,  as  the  muse  of 
science.  He  sees  good  in  all,  beauty  in  all.  It  is 
not  the  old  piety,  it  is  the  new  faith;  it  is  not  the 
old  worship,  it  is  the  new  acceptance;  not  the  old, 
corroding  religious  pessimism,  but  the  new  scientific 
optimism. 

He  does  not  deny,  he  affirms;  he  does  not  criti 
cise,  he  celebrates;  his  is  not  a  call  to  repentance, 
it  is  a  call  to  triumph :  — 

"  I  say  no  man  has  ever  yet  been  half  devout  enough, 
None  has  ever  yet  adored  or  worship'd  half  enough, 
None  has  begun  to  think  how  divine  he  himself  is,  or  how  certain 
the  future  is." 

He  accepted  science  absolutely,  yet  science  was  not 
an  end  in  itself:  it  was  not  his  dwelling;  he  but 
entered  by  it  to  an  area  of  his  dwelling. 

The  flower  of  science  was  religion.  Without 
this  religion,  or  something  akin  to  it,  —  without 
some  spiritual,  emotional  life  that  centred  about  an 
ideal,  —  Whitman  urged  that  there  could  be  no  per 
manent  national  or  individual  development.  In  the 


260  WHITMAN 

past  this  ideal  was  found  in  the  supernatural;  for 
us  and  the  future  democratic  ages,  it  must  be  found 
in  the  natural,  in  the  now  and  the  here. 

The  aristocratic  tradition  not  only  largely  shaped 
the  literature  of  the  past,  it  shaped  the  religion: 
man  was  a  culprit,  his  life  a  rebellion;  his  proper 
attitude  toward  the  unseen  powers  was  that  of  a 
subject  to  his  offended  sovereign,  —  one  of  prostra 
tion  and  supplication.  Heaven  was  a  select  circle 
reserved  for  the  few,  —  the  aristocracy  of  the  pure 
and  just.  The  religion  of  a  democratic  and  scien 
tific  era,  as  voiced  by  Whitman  and  as  exemplified 
in  his  life,  is  of  quite  another  character,  —  not  ven 
eration,  but  joy  and  triumph;  not  fear,  but  love; 
not  self-abasement,  but  self-exaltation;  not  sacri 
fice,  but  service:  in  fact,  not  religion  at  all  in  the 
old  sense  of  the  spiritual  at  war  with  the  natural, 
the  divine  with  the  human,  this  world  a  vale  of 
tears,  and  mundane  things  but  filth  and  ashes, 
heaven  for  the  good  and  hell  for  the  bad;  but  in 
the  new  sense  of  the  divinity  of  all  things,  of  the 
equality  of  gods  and  men,  of  the  brotherhood  of  the 
race,  of  the  identity  of  the  material  and  the  spirit 
ual,  of  the  beneficence  of  death  and  the  perfection 
of  the  universe.  The  poet  turns  his  face  to  earth 
and  not  to  heaven;  he  finds  the  miraculous,  the 
spiritual,  in  the  things  about  him,  and  gods  and  god 
desses  in  the  men  and  women  he  meets.  He  effaces 
the  old  distinctions ;  he  establishes  a  sort  of  univer 
sal  suffrage  in  spiritual  matters ;  there  are  no  select 
circles,  no  privileged  persons.  Is  this  the  democracy 


HIS  RELATION   TO  RELIGION  261 

of  religion?  liberty,  fraternity,  and  equality  carried 
out  in  the  spiritual  sphere?  Death  is  the  right 
hand  of  God,  and  evil  plays  a  necessary  part  also. 
Nothing  is  discriminated  against;  there  are  no  re 
prisals  or  postponements,  no  dualism  or  devilism. 
Everything  is  in  its  place;  man's  life  and  all  the 
things  of  his  life  are  well-considered. 

Carried  out  in  practice,  this  democratic  religion 
will  not  beget  priests,  or  churches,  or  creeds,  or 
rituals,  but  a  life  cheerful  and  full  on  all  sides, 
helpful,  loving,  unworldly,  tolerant,  open-souled, 
temperate,  fearless,  free,  and  contemplating  with 
pleasure,  rather  than  alarm,  "the  exquisite  transi 
tion  of  death." 


A  FESTAL  WOKD 

AFTER  all  I  have  written  about  Whitman,  I  feel 
at  times  that  the  main  thing  I  wanted  to  say  about 
him  I  have  not  said,  cannot  say;  the  best  about 
him  cannot  be  told  anyway.  "My  final  merit  I 
refuse  you."  His  full  significance  in  connection 
with  the  great  modern  movement ;  how  he  embodies 
it  all  and  speaks  out  of  it,  and  yet /maintains  his 
hold  upon  the  primitive,  the  aboriginal;  how  he 
presupposes  science  and  culture,  yet  draws  his 
strength  from  that  which  antedates  these  things J) 
how  he  glories  in  the  present,  and  yet  is  sustained 
and  justified  by  the  past;  how  he  is  the  poet  of 
America  and  the  modern,  and  yet  translates  these 
things  into  universal  truths;  how  he  is  the  poet  of 
wickedness,  while  yet  every  fibre  of  him  is  sound 
and  good;  how  his  page  is  burdened  with  the  mate 
rial,  the  real,  the  contemporary,  while  yet  his  hold 
upon  the  ideal,  the  spiritual,  never  relaxes;  how 
he  is  the  poet  of  the  body,  while  yet  he  is  in  even 
fuller  measure  the  poet  of  the  soul;  in  fact,  how  all 
contradictions  are  finally  reconciled  in  him,  —  all 
these  things  and  more,  I  say,  I  feel  that  I  have  not 
set  forth  with  the  clearness  and  emphasis  the  sub 
ject  demanded.  Other  students  of  him  will  approach 
him  on  other  lines,  and  will  disclose  meanings  that 
I  have  missed. 


264  WHITMAN 

Writing  about  him,  as  Symonds  said,  is  enor 
mously  difficult.  At  times  I  feel  as  if  I  was  almost 
as  much  at  sea  with  regard  to  him  as  when  I  first 
began  to  study  him;  not  at  sea  with  regard  to  his 
commanding  genius  and  power,  but  with  regard  to 
any  adequate  statement  and  summary  of  him  in  cur 
rent  critical  terms.  One  cannot  define  and  classify 
him  as  he  can  a  more  highly  specialized  poetic  gen 
ius.  What  is  he  like  ?/  He  is  like  everything.  He 
is  like  the  soil  which  holds  the  germs  of  a  thousand 
forms  of  life;  he  is  like  the  grass,  common,  uni 
versal,  perennial,  formless;  he  is  like  your  own 
heart,  mystical  yearning,  rebellious,  contradictory, 
but  ever  throbbing  with  life.  He  is  fluid,  genera 
tive,  electric;  he  is  full  of  the  germs,  potencies,  and 
latencies  of  things;  he  provokes  thought  without 
satisfying  it;  he  is  formless  without  being  void; 
he  is  both  Darwinian  and  Dantesque.^  He  is  the 
great  reconciler,  he  united  and  harmonized  so  many 
opposites  in  himself.  As  a  man  he  united  the  mas 
culine  and  feminine  elements  in  a  remarkable  de 
gree;  he  united  the  innocent  vanity  of  the  child 
with  the  self-reliance  of  a  god.  In  his  moral  as 
pects,  he  united  egoism  and  altruism,  pride  and 
charity,  individualism  and  democracy,  fierce  patriot 
ism  and  the  cosmopolitan  spirit;  in  his  literary 
aspects  he  united  mysticism  and  realism,  the  poet 
and  prophet,  the  local  and  the  universal;  in  his 
religious  aspects  he  united  faith  and  agnosticism, 
the  glorification  of  the  body  and  all  objective  things, 
with  an  unshakable  trust  in  the  reality  of  the  invisi 
ble  world. 


A  FINAL  WORD  265 

Bich  in  the  elements  of  poetry,  a  London  critic 
says,  almost  beyond  any  other  poet  of  his  time,  and 
yet  the  conscious,  elaborate,  crystallic,  poetic  work 
which  the  critic  demanded  of  him,  carefully  stop 
ping  short  of,  quite  content  to  hold  it  all  in  solu 
tion,  and  give  his  reader  an  impulse  rather  than  a 
specimen. 

I  have  accepted  Whitman  entire  and  without 
reservation.  I  could  not  do  otherwise.  It  was 
clear  enough  to  me  that  he  was  to  be  taken  as  a 
whole  or  not  at  all.  We  cannot  cut  and  carve  a 
man.  The  latest  poet  brings  us  poetic  wares,  curi 
ously  and  beautifully  carved  and  wrought  specimens, 
some  of  which  we  accept  and  some  of  which  we 
pass  by.  Whitman  brings  us  no  cunning  handi 
craft  of  the  muses:  he  brings  us  a  gospel,  he  brings 
us  a  man,  he  brings  us  a  new  revelation  of  life; 
and  either  his  work  appeals  to  us  as  a  whole,  or 
it  does  not  so  appeal.  He  will  not  live  in  sepa 
rate  passages,  or  in  a  few  brief  poems,  any  more 
than  Shakespeare  or  Homer  or  Dante,  or  the  Bible, 
so  lives. 

The  chief  thing  about  the  average  literary  poet 
is  his  poetic  gift,  apart  from  any  other  consideration ; 
we  select  from  what  he  brings  us  as  we  select  from 
a  basket  of  fruit.  The  chief  thing  about  Whitman 
is  the  personality  which  the  poetic  gift  is  engaged 
in  exploiting;  the  excitement  of  our  literary  or 
artistic  sense  is  always  less  than  th,e  excitement  of 
our  sense  of  life  and  of  real  things.  We  get  in 
him  a  fixed  point  of  view,  a  new  vantage-ground  of 


266  WHITMAN 

personality  from  which  to  survey  life.  It  is  less 
what  he  brings,  and  more  what  he  is,  than  with 
other  poets.  I  To  take  him  by  fragments,  picking 
out  poetic  tioTbits  here  and  there,  rejecting  all  the 
rest,  were  like  valuing  a  walk  through  the  fields 
and  woods  only  for  the  flowers  culled  here  and 
there,  or  the  bits  of  color  in  the  grass  or  foliage.) 
Is  the  air,  the  sunshine,  the  free  spaces,  the  rocks, 
the  soil,  the  trees,  and  the  exhilaration  of  it  all, 
nothing?  There  are  flowers  in  Whitman,  too,  but 
they  are  amid  the  rocks  or  under  the  trees,  and 
seem  quite  unpremeditated  and  by  the  way,  and 
never  the  main  concern.  If  our  quest  is  for 
these  alone,  we  shall  surely  be  disappointed.  "In 
order  to  appreciate  Whitman's  poetry  and  his  pur 
pose,"  says  Joel  Chandler  Harris,  "it  is  necessary 
to  possess  the  intuition  that  enables  the  mind  to 
grasp  in  instant  and  express  admiration  the  vast 
group  of  facts  that  make  man,  —  that  make  liberty, 

—  that  make  America.     There  is  no  poetry  in  the 
details;  it  is  all  in  the  broad,  sweeping,  comprehen 
sive  assimilation  of  the  mighty  forces  behind  them, 

—  the  inevitable,  unaccountable,  irresistible  forward 
movement  of  man  in  the  making  of  this  republic." 

And  again:  "Those  who  approach  Walt  Whit 
man's  poetry  from  the  literary  side  are  sure  to  be 
disappointed.  Whatever  else  it  is,  it  is  not  literary. 
Its  art  is  its  own,  and  the  melody  of  it  must  be 
sought  in  other  suggestions  than  those  of  metre.  .  .  . 
Those  who  are  merely  literary  will  find  little  sub 
stance  in  the  great  drama  of  Democracy  which  is 


A   FINAL   WORD  267 

outlined  by  Walt  Whitman  in  his  waitings,  —  it  is 
no  distinction  to  call  them  poems.  /  But  those  who 
know  nature  at  first  hand  4— who  know  man,  who 
see  in  this  Republic  something  more  than  a  political 
government  —  will  find  therein  the  thrill  and  glow 
of  poetry  and  the  essence  of  melody.  Not  the 
poetry  that  culture  stands  in  expectation  of,  nor 
the  melody  that  capers  in  verse  and  metre,  but 
those  rarer  intimations  and  suggestions  that  are 
born  in  primeval  solitudes,  or  come  whirling  from 
the  vast  funnel  of  the  storm."  How  admirable! 
how  true!  No  man  has  ever  spoken  more  to  the 
point  upon  Walt  Whitman. 

The  appearance  of  such  a  man  as  Whitman  in 
volves  deep  world-forces  of  race  and  time,  He  is 
rooted  in  the  very  basic  structure  of  his  age.  After 
what  1  have  already  said,  my  reader  will  not  be 
surprised  when!  I  tell  him  that  I  look  upon  Whit 
man  as  the  one  mountain  thus  far  in  our  literary 
landscape.]  To  me  he  changes  the  whole  aspect, 
almost  the*  very  climate,  of  our  literature.  He  adds 
the  much  -  needed  ruggedness,  breadth,  audacity, 
independence,  and  the  elements  of  primal  strength 
and  health.  We  owe  much  to  Emerson.  But 
Emerson  was  much  more  a  made  man  than  was 
Whitman,  —  much  more  the  result  of  secondary 
forces,  the  college,  the  church,  and  of  New  Eng 
land  social  and  literary  culture.  With  all  his  fervid 
humanity  and  deeply  ingrained  modernness,  Whit 
man  has  the  virtues  of  the  primal  and  the  savage. 
"  Leaves  of  Grass  "  has  not  the  charm,  or  the  kind 


268  WHITMAN 

of  charm,  of  the  more  highly  wrought  artistic  works, 
but  it  has  the  incentive  of  nature  and_the^  charm  _nf 
real  things.  We  shall  not  go  to  it  to  be  soothed 
and  lulled.  It  will  always  remain  among  the  diffi 
cult  and  heroic  undertakings,  demanding  our  best 
moments,  our  best  strength,  our  morning  push  and 
power.  Like  voyaging  or  mountain-climbing,  01 
facing  any  danger  or  hardship  by  land  or  sea,  it  fos 
ters  manly  endeavor  and  the  great  virtues  of  sanity 
and  self-reliance. 


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UNIVERSITY  OF  CAUFORNIA  LIBRAR^, 


